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The ROAD to CALVARY 



The 

Road 

to Calvary 


BY 

ALEXEY TOLSTOY 

n 

Translated by 

. 

Mrs. R. S. Townsend 



BONI AND LIVERIGHT 
Publishers :: New York 



Copyright, 1923 
by 

BONI & LIVERIGHT, Inc. 


Printed in the United States of America 




/ 

i 

1 

APR -2 ’23 * 

©CH704014 ,y\ 





THE ROAD TO CALVARY 




I 


“Oh, Russian Land!” 

The Word of Igor’s Armament. 

A stranger from some Moscow side street overhung 
with lime trees, finding himself in Petersburg, would, in 
the first moments of observation, have experienced a 
complex feeling of mental excitement and spiritual op¬ 
pression. 

Wandering through the straight and foggy streets past 
the solemn, box-like houses with their dark windows and 
drowsing yard-porters at the gates, gazing long at the 
watery stretch of the Neva, at the blue line of bridges 
with their lamps lighted before dusk, at the colonnade of 
comfortless, joyless palaces, at the piercing height of the 
non-Russian cathedral of Peter and Paul, at the poor 
little boats flitting over the dark water and the countless 
barges with dry wood ranged along the stone embank¬ 
ment, and gazing into the faces of the passers-by, pale 
and worried, with eyes as murky as a town, the stranger, 
observing all this, if kindly disposed, would have muffled 
his head still deeper into his collar; if unkindly disposed, 
would have felt a desire to strike out with all his might 
and shatter to fragments this cold, oppressive enchant¬ 
ment. 

In the days of Peter I., even, the deacon of Trinity 
Church, which to this day stands by Trinity Bridge, 
coming down from the belfry in the dark saw the ghost 
of a lean peasant woman and was greatly affrighted 

in 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


thereby. He said in the tavern afterwards, “Petersburg, 
to be sure, will be empty,” for the saying of which he 
was seized, tortured in the secret chancellery and beaten 
mercilessly with the knout. 

It was thus, no doubt, that it came to be believed that 
some evil lurked about Petersburg. There were eye¬ 
witnesses who claim to have seen the devil riding in a 
cab in a street of Vasiliev Island, and one midnight 
during a storm and at high water the Bronze Emperor was 
said to have wrenched himself from the granite rocks and 
tom over the stones. And a privy-councillor driving 
home in his carriage saw glued against the window 
thereof a corpse, the body of a dead civil-servant. Many 
such stories were current in the town. 

Also quite recently the poet Alexis Alexeyevitch Bezso- 
nov, driving one night over the arched bridge on 
his way to the island, caught sight of a star in the depths 
of the heavens through a dispersing cloud. Gazing long 
at the star with tears in his eyes, he reflected that the cab, 
the bridge, the thread of lamps and the whole of Peters¬ 
burg asleep behind him were nothing but an illusion, a 
spectre of delirium registered on his brain, befogged with 
wine, love and boredom. 

And it was as in a delirium, and in a hurry that Peters¬ 
burg was built. As a dream two centuries passed. 
Strange to all things living the city stood at the end of 
the earth in swamps and weeds, raving about universal 
glory and power. As spectres in delirium court revolu¬ 
tions flashed by, assassinations of emperors, triumphs and 
bloody executions. Frail women assumed semi-divine 
power; out of warm, crumpled beds the fate of peoples 
was resolved; strong fellows came, of powerful build and 
hands black with soil, and boldly they walked up to the 
throne to share the power, bed and the Byzantine luxury. 

[2] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


The surrounding country gazed in horror at this 
frenzied outburst of fantasy. In fear and dejection the 
Russian people looked on at the ravings of the capital. 
The country drank and could never drink its fill of its 
own blood and the spirit of the Petersburg phantoms. 

Petersburg lived a midnight life, turbulently cold and 
satiated. Phosphorescent summer nights, mad and 
sensual, sleepless winter nights with green tables and 
clink of gold, music, whirling couples behind windows, 
furious troikas, gipsies, duels, and at daybreak a shrill 
icy wind, the piercing blast of a bugle, a parade of troops 
before the petrifying gaze of the Emperor’s protruding 
eyes. Thus the city lived. 

In the last few dozen years huge undertakings sprang 
up with amazing rapidity. Millions’ worth of property 
rose as out of air. From crystal and cement, banks were 
built and music-halls, skating-rinks, gorgeous drinking- 
houses with deafening music, reflecting mirrors, half- 
naked women, light and champagne. Gambling clubs 
were quickly opened, meeting-houses, theatres, cinemato¬ 
graphs, moonlight gardens with American attractions. 
Engineers and capitalists were engaged on a plan of a 
new city of unparalleled luxury, to be built on a desert 
island not far from Petersburg. 

In the city an epidemic of suicide was rife. The law 
courts were filled with crowds of hysterical women 
greedily listening to the bloody details of the sensational 
cases. All was attainable—luxury and women. Depravity 
permeated everything; like a contagion, it spread to the 
court. 

And to the court, to the very throne of the most un¬ 
fortunate of emperors, came an illiterate peasant with 
wild eyes and great masculine strength, and in derision 
and scorn he began to defame Russia. 


[31 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


Petersburg, like every other town, lived its own life, 
strained and worried. A central force guided its motion, 
but this force had nothing in common with what might 
have been called the spirit of the town. The force tried 
to create order, calmness and fitness, the spirit of the 
town tried to destroy the force. The spirit of destruc¬ 
tion was in everything; like a putrid poison it permeated 
the extensive Bourse machinations of the famous Sashka 
Sakelman, the dull rancour of the workman at the steel 
foundry, the disjointed fancies of the popular poetess 
sitting at five in the morning in the artistic basement of 
“The Red Bells”; it permeated those who should have 
fought against it, but, not understanding, did all to 
sharpen and strengthen it. 

It was a time when love, and good wholesome feeling, 
were held to be commonplace and out of date. No one 
loved, all thirsted; and as though poisoned, they seized 
on any acrid thing that would tear their vitals. 

Girls concealed their innocence, the married their faith¬ 
fulness. Destruction was held to be good taste, neuras¬ 
thenia a sign of refinement. This was taught by the new 
writers who sprang to fame in a season out of nothing. 
People feigned sins and vices they possessed not for 
fear of being thought dull. 

To breathe the air of the grave, to feel near one the 
trembling body of a woman consumed with a devilish 
curiosity, this was the pathos of the poetry of the last 
years—death and sensuality. 

Such was Petersburg in the year 1914. Worn out with 
sleepless nights, drowning its despair in wine, gold, love¬ 
less love, in the insistent strains of the tango—the death 
hymn—it lived as if in expectancy of the terrible and 
fatal day. There were those who predicted it. The 
new and incomprehensible crept in through every crevice. 

[ 4 ] 


II 


“We don’t want to remember anything. We say, 
Enough, turn your back on the past! What is there in 
the past for me? Milo’s Venus? What use is she to 
me? You can’t eat her! She doesn’t even make the hair 
grow! What do I want with the stone carcass? But 
you must have art! art! You like to tickle your heels 
with the word. Look to the side of you! look before you! 
look under your feet! Aren’t those American boots you 
have on ? Three cheers for American boots! A red 
motor-car, rubber tires, a pool of petrol, a hundred miles 
an hour, there you have art! It makes you want to devour 
space. Or a poster ten yards long with a young man 
on it in a top-hat as brilliant as the sun, that’s art! It’s 
your tailor who’s your artist, your present-day genius! 
I want to devour life and you offer me some sweetened 
water, good for the sexually impotent. ...” 

A burst of laughter and applause came from the back 
of the narrow hall, where a crowd of undergraduates from 
the universities were gathered behind the chairs. The 
speaker, Peter Petrovitch Sapojkov, smiled with his moist 
mouth. He steadied the wobbling glasses on his big nose 
and quickly walked down the steps of the wooden ros¬ 
trum. 

To one side of it, at a long table lighted by two five- 
candled sconces, sat the members of the Philosophical 
Evenings Society. There was the President, Antinovsky, 
a professor of theology, and the lecturer of the evening, 
the historian Veliaminov; the philosopher Borsky, who 

[5] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


had been expelled from the Theological Academy for 
leanings toward socialism and had in turn abandoned the 
socialists and been reviled by them; there was the crafty 
writer, Sakunin, author of some cynical and remarkable 
books. 

The Philosophical Evenings Society had this winter 
sustained an onslaught from pugnacious youngsters whom 
no one knew. They attacked venerable writers and 
esteemed philosophers with such audacity and said such 
impudently smart things that the detached old house on 
the Fontanka, where the meetings were held, was packed 
on Saturdays, the days of public meetings. 

It was packed this evening. When Sapojkov disap¬ 
peared in the crowd amidst spasmodic hand-clapping, 
there got up on the platform a little man with a knobby 
shaven head, a young face, yellow skin and high cheek¬ 
bones. His name was Akundin. He had made his ap¬ 
pearance there quite recently, and his success, especially 
among the audience at the back of the hall, was enormous. 
When one asked who he was and where he came from, 
sensible people smiled mysteriously. His name was not 
Akundin, in any case. He had come from abroad; it was 
for no idle purpose that he had appeared there. 

Akundin stroked his thin beard, looked round at the 
silenced audience, smiled and began to speak. 

In the third row by the middle gangway, her chin 
supported on her closed hand, sat a young girl, in a black 
cloth dress cut high at the neck. Her fine, ash-coloured 
hair, drawn over the ears and rolled in a large knot, was 
caught with a comb. Without a movement or a smile 
she gazed at the men sitting at the green table; sometimes 
her eyes became fixed on the candles. 

When Akundin, with a bang of his dry fist on the 
wooden rostrum, cried out, “World economics will strike 


[61 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


the first blow of the iron fist on the dome of the Church'! 
The fight against the Church is purely a question of eco¬ 
nomics !” the girl sighed slightly and, taking her hand 
from her reddened chin, she put a caramel in her mouth. 

Akundin went on. 

“And you are still dreaming your muddled dreams ot 
the Kingdom of God on earth! Here you are snoring 
and seeing visions and mumbling Messiahism in your 
sleep. Yet for all your efforts the people are still asleep. 
Or do you hope they’ll wake up and speak like Balaam's 
ass? They’ll wake up, to be sure, but it won’t be the 
sweet voices of your poets that’ll wake them, nor the 
smoke of your incense. It will be the factory whistle 
that’ll wake them! The people will wake and speak, not 
of Messiahism, but of justice, and their voices will grate 
on your ears. Or do you still put faith in your rubbish 
and your bogs? You could go on sleeping here for an¬ 
other half a century, I believe, but don’t call it Messiah¬ 
ism. It is not coming; it is passing like a shadow over the 
earth! It was here in Petersburg, in this beautiful hall, 
that the Russian peasant was invented. Hundreds of 
books have been written about him, operas have been 
composed about him. It is like a game of shadows on a 
wall. I only fear that the game will end in blood¬ 
shed. ...” 

At this point the President interposed. Akundin gave 
a faint smile. He took a large dirty pocket-handkerchief 
and with an habitual gesture, wiped his head and fore¬ 
head. From the back of the hall voices called out. 

“Let him speak!” 

“A shame to stop him!” 

“It’s disgraceful!” 

“Shut up, you there!” 

“Shut up yourself!” 


[7] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


Akundin went on. 

“The Russian peasant is a peg on which to hang ideas. 
But if these ideas are organically opposed to his instincts, 
to his age-long desires, to his primitive idea of justice, 
his understanding of humanity, your ideas will fall as a 
seed on a stone. Until the peasant is regarded as a man 
with an empty stomach, with a spine bent with toil, until 
you get rid of those Messianic qualities invented for him 
by some gentleman or other, until then will you have two 
tragically opposite poles—your excellent theories, born in 
dim studies, and a greedy, half bestial life. We are not 
really criticizing you. It would be a waste of time to 
examine all your mass of human fantasy. No. We say 
to you, turn your ideas into reality! Don’t sit and phi¬ 
losophize ! Experiment! Let your experiments be 
desperate, but you’ll prove the value of your ideas; you’ll 
know how to live. ...” 

The girl in the black cloth dress did not think it worth 
while to reflect on the speaker’s words. Their arguments 
were, no doubt, impressive, but the important fact about 
them all was—well, for instance—and she was quite 
convinced of this—Akundin loved no one on earth but 
himself and would have felt no compunction in shooting 
a man if it were necessary to prove his theories. 

While she was thinking this another man approached 
the green table. He sat slowly down near the President, 
nodded to right and to left, passed his reddened hand over 
his fair hair, wet from the snow, wiped his fingers on his 
pocket-handkerchief, put his hands beneath the table and 
pulled himself up in his narrow black jacket. He had 
a swarthy face, arched eyebrows, large grey eyes and 
hair falling over his forehead like a skull-cap. It was 
Alexis Alexeyevitch Bezsonov, just as he was pictured in 
the current number of a weekly journal. 

[8] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


The girl could see nothing now but his almost repul¬ 
sively handsome face. In a kind of terror she regarded 
the strange features of which she had dreamt so often 
in the stormy Petersburg nights. 

There he was bending to his neighbor’s ear; he smiled 
and his smile was simple, but in the line of his nostrils, 
in the somewhat feminine brows, in some quiet force 
in his face there was treachery, conceit, and something 
else which she could not understand, but which excited 
her more than the rest. 

At this moment the lecturer, Veliaminov, red-faced 
and bearded, with gold spectacles and tufty golden-grey 
hair around his large head, rose to answer Akundin. 

“You are as right as the avalanche crashing down the 
mountains. We have long been expecting the advent of 
your terrible age and prophesied the triumph of your truth. 
It is you who control the elements, not we. We do not 
prop up your avalanche with our shoulders. We know 
that when it has rolled to the bottom, to the earth, its 
strength will be broken, and your higher truth, for the 
conquest of which you shriek with your factory hooters, 
will be a mass of broken fragments—chaos—amidst 
which man will wander stunned. Take care,” Velia¬ 
minov raised a finger as long as a pencil and looked 
severely through his spectacles at the audience. “In the 
paradise of which you dream, in the name of which you 
want to convert a living man into a syllogism, dressed in 
a hat and coat and with a rifle over his shoulder, in your 
terrible paradise a new revolution is preparing, more 
terrible perhaps than any revolution-—the revolution of 
the Spirit--” 

Akundin interjected coldly from his place: 

“That has been foreseen.” 

Veliaminov stretched out his hands across the table. 

[9] 



THE ROAD TO CALVARY 

The candles threw a light on the bald patch on his head. 
He spoke of the sin into which the world had fallen 
and of the future terrible reckoning. In the hall people 
began to cough. 

During the interval the girl went into the refreshment- 
room and stood by the door, frowning and apart. Sev¬ 
eral advocates and their wives were drinking tea and talk¬ 
ing more loudly than most people. By the stove stood 
Chernobilin, the famous writer, eating fish and bilberries 
and glancing now and then with resentful and drunken 
eyes at the new-comers. Two middle-aged literary 
women with broad ribbons round their hair were munch¬ 
ing sandwiches by the counter. Several priests stood 
staidly aside, not mixing with the laymen. Under the 
chandelier, his hands behind the tails of his long coat 
and balancing himself on his heels, was a greyish man 
with matted hair. This was Chirva, the critic, waiting 
for some one to come and talk to him. Veliaminov ap¬ 
peared. One of the literary women rushed up to him 
and grabbed his sleeve, which he carefully tried to extri¬ 
cate during their conversation. The other literary wo¬ 
man also stopped munching and shook off the crumbs; 
she bent her head and opened her eyes wide. Bezsonoy 
came up to her, bowing to right and to left with a humble 
inclination of the head. 

The girl in black felt in her bones how the literary 
woman straightened herself in her corsets and assumed 
an affected air. Bezsonov said something to her with an 
indolent smile. She clapped her hands and laughed, roll¬ 
ing her eyes. 

'‘Horrible, dirty creature,” thought the girl and went 
out of the refreshment-room. Some one called to her. 
Pushing his way through the crowd was a dark, tired-look¬ 
ing youth in a velveteen jacket; he nodded joyfully, screw- 

[ 10 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


mg up his nose with pleasure. He took her hand. His 
palm was clammy, on his forehead was a clammy tuft of 
hair and his oval watery eyes gazed at her with a watery 
tenderness. It was Alexander Ivanovitch Jirov. 

“Well, now, what are you doing here, Dasha Dmitriev¬ 
na?” he said. 

“Just what you are doing,” she replied, withdrawing 
her hand, which she put into her muff and wiped on her 
pocket-handker chie f. 

He laughed, and looking at her still more tenderly, said: 

“How did you like Sapojkov tonight? He spoke like 
a prophet. His severity of expression is irritating, but 
his ideas ... At bottom, aren’t they what we all want? 
Only we’re afraid to say so, he isn’t. Have you seen his 
latest verse ? 

Young, young, young are we all 

With devilishly hungry stomachs. 

Let us swallow the void. . . . 

Very strong and original. Don’t you feel, Daria Dmi¬ 
trievna, that the new, the new is coming with a rush? It’s 
our very own, bold, greedy! There’s Akundin, now. 
There may be too much logic about him, but he hits the 
nail on the head every time. Another two or three winters 
like this and the whole thing will crumble; it’ll burst at 
the seams. Won’t that be good!” He spoke quietly, 
with a soft smile. Dasha felt him trembling all over as 
with some horrible excitement. She did not stop to 
listen, but nodded to him and pushed her way to the 
cloakroom. 

The morose, medal-bedecked porter, who was dragging 
a bundle of coats and galoshes, paid no heed to Dasha’s 
proffered ticket. She had to wait long in the draught of 
the swinging door, where without, in the deserted vesti¬ 
bule, tall peasant-cabmen, in their wet blue coats, were 

mi 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


gaily and impudently offering their services to the people 
coming out. 

“I’ve a fast horse, Your ’Cellency!” 

“It’s on your way, on the Peski!” 

Suddenly behind her Bezsonov’s voice was heard in a 
cold staccato: “Porter, my coat, hat and stick.” 

Dasha had a sensation of pins and needles running 
down her back. She turned her head quickly and looked 
straight into Bezsonov’s eyes. He met her gaze calmly 
and indifferently, then his eyelids quivered; his grey eyes 
lighted up, yielding, and Dasha felt her heart beat fast. 

“If I am not mistaken,” he said, “we have met at your 
sister’s.” 

“We have,” Dasha replied boldly. 

She snatched her coat from the porter and hastened 
to the door. In the street a damp cold wind caught her 
dress, dashing the stinging drops against her. Dasha 
muffled herself to her eyes in her fur collar. Some one 
catching up with her whispered near her ear: “What 
eyes! my pretty!” 

Dasha walked quickly over the wet asphalt, along the 
purple quivering lines of electric light. From the swing¬ 
ing doors of a restaurant a sound of violins was heard 
playing a waltz. And Dasha, without turning round, 
hummed into her shaggy fur muff, “It’s not so easy, easy, 
easy!” 


[12] 


Ill 


Unfastening her coat in the hall, Dasha asked the maid, 
“Is no one at home?” 

The Great Mpgul—it was thus the maid Lusha was 
nicknamed, for her bepowdered face with the high cheek¬ 
bones was very like the face of an idol—took a peep at 
the looking-glass, and in a thin voice replied that the 
mistress was not at home, but that the master was at 
home, and in his study, and that supper would be served 
in half an hour. 

Dasha went into the drawing-room, where she sat down 
by the piano, crossed her legs and embraced her knees. 

Her brother-in-law, Nikolai Ivanovitch, was at home, 
which meant that he had quarrelled with his wife; he 
would be feeling injured and would complain. It was 
only eleven now and there was nothing to do until three 
when she would fall asleep. Should she read? But 
what? Besides, she did not want to. Think? But that, 
if anything, would be worse for her. How comfortless 
life was at times! 

Dasha sighed. She opened the piano and sitting side¬ 
ways at it, began to play something of Scriabin’s with 
one hand. It was hard for any one at the awkward age 
of nineteen, especially for a girl, and not a stupid girl, 
by any means, and one who, moreover, from some absurd 
sense of purity was so very severe with all—and these 
were not few—who expressed a desire to dispel a maiden’s 
melancholy. 

The year before Dasha had come from Samara to 

[ 13 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 

Petersburg for a course in law and had settled with her 
elder sister Ekaterina Dmitrievna Smokovnikov. Her 
husband was a well-known advocate and they lived bois¬ 
terously and in grand style. 

Dasha was five years younger than her sister. When 
Ekaterina Dmitrievna married Dasha was still a child. 
For the last few years the sisters had seen little of each 
other and now a new relationship had sprung up between 
them, an attitude of adoration on the part of Dasha and 
gentle affection on the part of Ekaterina Dmitrievna. 

At first Dasha imitated her sister in everything, admired 
her beauty, her taste, her manner with people. She was 
shy of her sister’s friends and in her nervousness said 
rude things to some. Ekaterina Dmitrievna tried to make 
her house a model of taste and modernity, of the kind 
that had not yet become popular. She did not miss a 
single exhibition and bought futurist pictures. On this 
account, during the last year, there had been stormy 
scenes with her husband, who liked paintings of the ideal¬ 
istic kind, while Ekaterina Dmitrievna, with all her femi¬ 
nine enthusiasm, resolved to suffer for the new art rather 
than be thought old-fashioned. 

Dasha, too, admired these strange pictures which had 
been hung about the drawing-room, though she thought 
sometimes in sorrow that the square figures with their 
geometrical faces and superfluous quantity of arms and 
legs, and the thickly laid on paint which was like a head¬ 
ache—in fact the whole of the manufacturing, cast-iron, 
cynical poetry which had risen against the Lord God, was 
rather beyond her dull imagination. 

Every Tuesday in the Smokovnikovs’ dining-room, a 
gay and noisy company was gathered to supper. There 
were talkative advocates, admirers of the opposite sex, 
and two or three journalists who carefully followed the 

[ 14 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


new literary tendencies and knew well what attitude to 
adopt in home and foreign politics; there was the highly 
strung critic Chirva, who was working on one of his 
usual literary catastrophes. Sometimes, very early, young 
poets came, leaving manuscripts of their verses in the 
hall, in their coat pockets. Just before supper some 
celebrity would appear in the drawing-room, would walk 
slowly up to the hostess, bend over her hand and sit 
down with dignity in an armchair. Half way through 
supper one would hear some one in the hall noisily taking 
off his leather galoshes and a velvety voice would say ‘‘I 
greet you, O Great Mogul!” and then over the hostess’s 
chair would bend the clean-shaven face of the resigned 
stage-lover. 

“Katusha,” he would say every time, “from today I’ve 
sworn not to drink any more. Really I have.” 

For Dasha the most important person at these suppers 
was her sister. Dasha was angry with those who were 
not sufficiently attentive to the dear, kind, simple-hearted 
Ekaterina Dmitrievna and was jealous of those who were 
too attentive, casting angry glances at the culprits. 

By degrees she grew accustomed to the crowds, so 
confusing to the inexperienced. Advocates’ assistants she 
now despised; besides their rough morning-coats, lilac 
neckties and partings in the middle of the hair, there 
was nothing else in them. The resigned stage-lover she 
hated. He had no right to call her sister Katie, or the 
Great Mogul, Great Mogul, nor had he any right what¬ 
ever, when he finished a glass of vodka, to wink a pro¬ 
truding eye at Dasha and to say “I drink to the blossom¬ 
ing almond!” 

Every time this happened Dasha choked with rage. 

Her cheeks were certainly rosy and do what she 
would she could not get rid' of the almond-blossom 

[ 15 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


color. But at table Dasha's face felt as red as a beetroot. 

In the summer Dasha did not go to her father’s in 
hot, dusty Samara, but gladly agreed to stay by the sea 
with her sister in Sestroretska. The same people were 
there that one saw in the winter, only one met them more 
often, went boating with them, ate ices in the pine woods, 
listened to music in the evenings and supped noisily on 
the verandas of the boarding-houses beneath the stars. 

Ekaterina Dmitrievna ordered Dasha a white embroi¬ 
dered dress, a pink gauze hat, trimmed with a black ribbon, 
and a broad silk sash to be tied in a large bow at the 
back, and suddenly, as though his eyes were only just 
opened, Kulichok, her brother-in-law’s assistant, fell in 
love with Dasha. 

But he belonged to the “despised.” Dasha was furious. 
She took him for a walk in the woods and without giv¬ 
ing him an opportunity to say a word in self-defence (he 
was merely able to wipe his brow with his pocket-hand¬ 
kerchief, rolled into a ball) she told him that she was 
not a bourgeois and would not allow herself to be re¬ 
garded as a “female,” that she was annoyed and insulted, 
and considered him disgusting, and that she would that 
very day complain to her brother-in-law. 

And complain to her brother-in-law she did that very 
evening. Nikolai Ivanovitch let her finish to the end while 
he stroked his thin beard and gazed in wonder at Dasha’s 
almond-blossom cheeks, grown a deeper shade with in¬ 
dignation, at her furiously agitated hat, at the whole of 
Dasha’s slim white figure; then he sat down on the sand 
by the water and began to laugh. He pulled out his 
handkerchief and wiped his eyes, saying, “Go away, 
Daria, go away, or I’ll die!” 

Dasha went, comprehending nothing, confused and dis¬ 
turbed. Kulichok now dared not look at her ; he grew 

[ 16 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


thin and retired. Dasha’s honour was saved. But the 
whole incident unexpectedly aroused in her dormant feel¬ 
ings. Broken was that subtle calmness; it seemed as 
though into the whole of Dasha’s body, from her head 
to her heels, there had entered another being, suffocating, 
illusive, formless and disgusting. Dasha felt this being 
in her very bones; she was tormented by it as by some¬ 
thing unclean: she wanted to wash off this invisible web, 
to be again fresh, cool and light-hearted. 

She now played tennis for hours at a time, bathed 
twice a day, rose early in the morning, when large dew- 
drops were still shining on the leaves and vapour rose 
from the purple sea, as smooth as a mirror, and the wet 
tables were being placed on the deserted veranda, and 
the wet gravel paths were being swept. 

But, when heated by the sun, or at night in her soft 
bed the other being revived from all these repressions; 
carefully it found its way to her heart and squeezed it 
with its warm paw. 

It could not be shaken off, nor, like the blood from Blue 
Beard’s key, could it be washed off. 

All their friends, and most of all her sister, found that 
Dasha had improved this summer, in fact that she was 
growing prettier every day. 

One day Ekaterina Dmitrievna, going into her sister’s 
room, said, “What’s going to happen to us next?” 

“What do you mean, Katia?” 

Dasha, in her chemise, was sitting on the bed, twisting 
her ash-coloured hair into a large knot. 

“You’re getting too pretty. It’s quite frightening to 
think what you’ll do next.” 

Dasha with her severe “thick-dashed” eyes looked at her 
sister and turned away. Her cheeks and ears went a 
bright red. 


[17] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 

“Katia, I wish you wouldn’t talk like that; I don’t 
like it.” 

Ekaterina Dmitrievna sat down on the bed, put her 
cheek against Dasha’s bare back and, laughing, kissed her 
between the shoulder blades. 

“What a homed monster we are; not like a frog or a 
hedgehog or a wildcat.” 

And her sister began to laugh just as Nikolai Ivano- 
vitch had done. They did not care to understand what had 
happened to Dasha, or it seemed to them just as it should 
be and quite natural. 

One day an Englishman appeared on the crowded 
tennis-court. He was thin, clean-shaven, had a protrud¬ 
ing chin and childlike eyes. He was so immaculately 
dressed that certain of Ekaterina Dmitrievna’s younger 
followers grew quite depressed. He asked Dasha for a 
game and played like a machine. It seemed to Dasha the 
whole time they were playing that he did not look at her 
once, but stared past her. She lost and suggested an¬ 
other game. For greater freedom she rolled up the 
sleeves of her white blouse. A lock of hair came down 
from beneath her pique cap; she did not stop to tidy it. 
Returning the ball with a strong drive by the net he 
thought: 

“Here is a clever Russian girl with an inexplicable 
grace in her every movement and a flush on her cheek.” 

The Englishman won this time, too. He bowed to Dasha 
and putting on his blazer—he was quite unfeeling— 
lighted a fragrant cigarette, and sitting down near by, 
asked for a glass of lemonade. 

Playing a third set with a distinguished schoolboy. 
He was sitting at the little table, nursing his foot, in 
a silk sock; his hat was pushed to the back of his 
head, and without moving, he was gazing at the sea. 

[ 18 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


At night, lying in bed, Dasha recalled all this. She 
could see herself rushing about the lawn with flushed 
face and hair coming down and she cried for very shame, 
from a feeling of self-pity and from some other cause 
that was stronger than herself. 

From that day Dasha left off playing tennis. Once her 
sister said to her, “Dasha, Mr. Bales asks after you every 
day. Why don’t you play now?” 

Dasha opened her mouth wide—she was so startled. 
Then she said angrily that she had no wish to listen to 
“idle gossip,” that she did not know a Mr. Bales and had 
no wish to know him, and that, anyhow, it was just like 
his impudence to think that she did not play at “the stupid 
game” because of him. Dasha refused to have any din¬ 
ner. She took some bread and gooseberries and went 
into the woods, and there, amidst the sweet-smelling, 
warm resinous pines, wandering among the tall red trunks 
with their rustling tops, she decided that it was useless 
any longer to hide the truth; she was in love with the 
Englishman, was miserable and did not want to live. 

Thus, raising its head little by little, this second being 
grew up in Dasha. The presence was revolting at first; 
it was like something unclean, unwholesome, or like decay. 
Then she grew accustomed to the dual position as, when 
the summer had gone by, she would get used to cold 
winds, cold water, tightening herself in her corsets and 
to putting on a cloth dress. 

Her “monstrous” love for the Englishman lasted for 
two weeks. Dasha hated herself and was furious with 
the man. On several occasions she saw him playing 
tennis, lazily but well; at other times she saw him run¬ 
ning races on the sands, or supping with Russian sailors, 
and in her despair she thought that he was the most 
fascinating man in the world. 


[19] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


And then she saw him about with a tall thin girl 
dressed in white flannel. She was English and his fiancee 
—and then they went away. Dasha did not sleep the 
whole of that night. She loathed and hated herself and 
by morning resolved that this would be the last mis¬ 
take she would make in her life. 

With this she grew calmer and then wondered how 
quickly and easily the whole incident had passed. But 
not everything had passed. Dasha felt how the second 
being seemed to be merged in her, dissolved in her-—to 
disappear. She had grown different—fresh and light¬ 
hearted as of old, but more tender and gentle and in¬ 
comprehensible ; her skin even seemed to be finer; she 
scarcely knew her face in the glass; her eyes in particu¬ 
lar were different—those wonderful eyes; if you looked 
into them, your head began to swim. 

In the middle of August the Smokovnikovs and Dasha 
returned to Petersburg to their large flat on the Znamen- 
ska. Again there were the Tuesday at-homes, picture 
exhibitions, stormy first nights in the theatres, sensational 
law cases, buying of pictures, hunting for antiques, 
night excursions to the gipsies in Samarkand. Again 
there appeared the resigned stage-lover, who had lost 
twenty-three pounds in weight during his mineral-water 
treatment, and, added to all these thrilling pleasures, 
there were vague, disturbing and joyous rumours that 
some change was in preparation. 

Dasha now had little time to think or to feel. In the 
morning there were lectures; in the afternoon shopping 
with her sister and in the evening theatres, suppers, 
people—not a moment to be alone. 

On one of the Tuesday at-homes, after supper, when 
they were all drinking liqueurs, Alexis Alexeyevitch Bez- 
sonov came into the drawing-room. Catching sight of 

[20] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


him in the doorway, Ekaterina Dmitrievna flushed a deep 
red. General conversation ceased. Bezsonov sat down 
on the couch and Ekaterina Dmitrievna handed him a 
cup of coffee. 

He was joined by two connoisseurs of literature—two 
advocates—but with a strange long glance at the hostess, 
Bezsonov unexpectedly announced that in general there 
was no art, that all we had was charlatanism, the fakir's 
trick of making a monkey climb to heaven up a rope. 

“The trick in itself is harmless; in art it is subtle, 
devilish deception. You’ve come to hear poetry. What 
does that mean, now? Some family man of thirty-five 
will suddenly get up and pretend that there is something 
in him that others haven’t got—something not human— 
and he’ll tell you in rhyme how he wants to corrupt a 
girl and you’ll think it very exalted. I hate it. There’s 
no poetry in it. Everything has long been dead, art as 
well as people. Russia has fallen and a flock of crows 
are feasting on her body. All who write poetry will 
go to hell.” 

He spoke quietly, in a deep voice. Two bright red 
spots appeared on his pale, sullen face. His soft collar 
was crumpled; his coat was covered with ash; the coffee 
in the cup he was holding was trickling on to the carpet. 

The literary connoisseurs were ready to argue, but 
Bezsonov paid no attention to them; with bedimmed eyes 
he was watching Ekaterina Dmitrievna. He rose and 
went over to her, and Dasha heard him say, “I can’t 
stand people. Can I go?” 

Timidly she asked him to read something. He shook 
his head and in taking leave, held her hand so long that 
Ekaterina Dmitrievna went red all over. 

When he had gone a discussion arose. The men all 
agreed that “there are limits,” and “you can’t so openly 

[21] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


despise our society.” Chirva, the critic, went from one 
to another saying that “he was dead drunk.” The ladies 
concluded that “whether Bezsonov was drunk or merely 
in one of his moods, was no matter; he was a most ex¬ 
citing person and they would have them all know it.” 

At dinner the next day, Dasha announced that Bez¬ 
sonov seemed to her one of those rare “real” personal¬ 
ities, whose experiences, passions, sins, tastes, as a re¬ 
flection of light, were reflected in the lives of all the 
people surrounding Ekaterina Dmitrievna, who live by 
them alone. “I can understand, Katia, how you can lose 
your head over such a man.” 

Nikolai Ivanovitch objected. “You are influenced, 
Dasha, by the fact of his being a celebrity.” Ekaterina 
Dmitrievna was silent. Bezsonov did not come again to 
the Smokovnikovs. There was a rumour that he was fre¬ 
quently behind the scenes with the actress, Charodeieva. 
Kulichok and his friends went to see this actress and 
were disappointed. She was as thin as a bone; nothing 
of her but lace petticoats. 

One day Dasha met Bezsonov at an exhibition. He 
was standing by the window indifferently turning over 
the leaves of the catalogue and in front of him, as though 
standing before a wax image, were two sturdy girl stu¬ 
dents gazing at him with petrified smiles. Dasha walked 
past quickly and in the next room she sat down on a 
chair. Her legs suddenly gave way beneath her and 
she felt miserable without knowing why. 

After this she bought Bezsonov’s photograph and put 
it on her table. His poems—there were three little white 
volumes—at first had the effect of poison on her. She 
went about for days distraught, as though she had be¬ 
come a participant in some evil, mysterious rite. But 
rereading them again and again she began to enjoy the 

[22] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


unwholesome feverish sensations; some one seemed to 
whisper to her to forget, to slacken, to trample on some 
precious thing, to long for something which never was. 

It was on account of Bezsonov that she took to going 
to the meetings of the Philosophical Evenings Society. 
He used to come late and rarely spoke, but each time, 
Dasha returned home in a state of excitement and was 
glad if she found visitors there. Her pride was quies¬ 
cent. 

Tonight she had to play Scriabin in solitude. Like 
little balls of ice the notes fall on the heart, in the depths 
of a bottomless lake; falling they disturb the water and 
sink, and the water flows in and recedes, and in the 
burning darkness, the heart beats loudly and fast, and 
it seems that soon, now, this very moment, some im¬ 
possible thing must happen. 

Dasha let her hands fall on her knees and raised her 
head. In the soft light cast by the orange lamp-shade 
there stared at her from the walls purple, swollen, grin¬ 
ning faces with bulging eyes, looking like the ghosts of 
protoplasmic chaos greedily stuck in the garden of the 
Lord God on the first day of creation. 

“Yes, my dear ladies, things are bad with us,” Dasha 
said. Then she played a scale, quietly shut the lid of the 
piano; from a little Japanese box standing on a small 
table by a couch, she took a cigarette, which she lighted, 
but it made her cough, so she crumpled it up on the 
ash-tray. 

“Nikolai Ivanovitch, what time is it?” Dasha called, 
loudly enough to be heard through four rooms. Some¬ 
thing fell over in the study, but there was no reply. The 
Great M‘ogul appeared and taking a peep in the looking- 
glass, announced that supper was ready. 

At the table she sat near a vase of fading flowers; 

[23] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


she pulled them to pieces and put the petals on the table¬ 
cloth. The Mogul served tea, cold meat and an omelette. 
Nikolai Ivanovitch appeared at last. He wore a new 
suit of blue clothes, but no collar. His hair was unkempt 
and on his beard, which was crushed on one side, there 
hung a piece of fluff from the sofa cushions. 

Nikolai Ivanovitch nodded sullenly to Dasha, sat down 
at the end of the table, pulled the omelette dish over to 
himself and began to eat greedily. 

Having finished, he leaned his elbow on the edge of 
the table, rested his cheek on his large, hairy fist, and 
fixing his eyes vacantly on the heap of torn petals, he 
said in a low, almost unnatural voice: 

“Last night your sister was unfaithful to me.” 


[24] 


IV 


Her own sister, Katia, had committed some incompre¬ 
hensible, dark, terrible deed. Last night her head had 
lain on the pillow, averted from all things living dear 
and affectionate, and now her body was crushed and 
hidden. Shuddering, this is how she visualized what 
Nikolai Ivanovitch had called unfaithfulness. And 
added to all, Katia was not at home, as though she no 
longer existed on earth. 

For the first few moments Dasha was stunned and 
her eyes grew dim. Without a movement she sat ex¬ 
pecting to hear Nikolai Ivanovitch burst out screaming 
or sobbing. But he did not add a word after his an¬ 
nouncement ; he kept toying with a fork-rest lying on the 
table. Dasha dared not look him in the face. 

After a long silence, he moved his chair back with a 
clatter and went into his study. “He’ll shoot himself,” 
Dasha thought. But this, too, did not happen. In a 
momentary feeling of acute pity she recalled how his 
large, hairy arm rested on the table, but then he faded 
from her vision and Dasha kept on repeating to herself: 
“What is to be done? What is to be done?” There was 
a ringing sound in her brain; everything, everything was 
shattered and mutilated. 

From behind the heavy curtains the Great Mogul ap¬ 
peared with a tray. Dasha looked into her powdered face 
and suddenly realized that there was no Great Mogul 
now, nor would there ever be. Tears came into her 
eyes. She clenched her teeth and rushed into the draw¬ 
ing-room. 


[25] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


There, every little thing had been placed and every 
picture had been hung by Katia’s loving hand. But 
Katia’s soul had gone out of the room and everything in 
it was barren and desolate. Dasha sat down on the sofa. 
By degrees her gaze grew fixed on a recently acquired 
picture, which was hanging on the wall above the piano. 
For the first time she saw and understood its meaning. 

It represented a naked woman, of a blear-red colour, 
like raw skin. The mouth was on one side; instead of a 
nose there was a triangular hole; the head was square 
with a piece of real stuff stuck on it; the legs and knees 
were in jointed sections; in the hand she held a flower. 
The other details were horrible., Most horrible of all was 
the corner in which she sat, bow-legged—a dull, brown- 
coloured spot—such spots, no doubt, as there are in 
hell. The picture was called “Love,” but Katia used to 
call it “The Modern Venus.” 

“I see now why Katia was so delighted with the aban¬ 
doned woman. She is like that herself now, with a 
flower in some corner.” Dasha lay face downwards on 
the cushion, digging her teeth into it to prevent herself 
from screaming. She burst into tears. After a time, 
Nikolai Ivanovitch came into the room. He stood with 
his legs apart, snapped his cigarette-lighter viciously 
and blew out a cloud of smoke. Then he walked over 
to the piano and began to strum on it with one finger, 
unexpectedly strumming out the tune of “Chaffinch.” 
He banged down the lid of the piano and said, “It 
was to be expected.” 

Dasha repeated the words to herself several times to 
comprehend their meaning. A loud ring was heard 
in the hall. Nikolai Ivanovitch raised his hand to 
stroke his beard, but with a smothered exclamation of 
“O-o-ol” he dropped it and walked quickly out of the 

[26] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


room into his study. Along the passage came the 
sound of the Great Mogul’s footsteps, like horse-hoofs, 
Dasha sprang up from the sofa with bedimmed eyes 
and fast-beating heart and rushed out into the hall. 

There stood Ekaterina Dmitrievna with her nose 
screwed up, clumsily trying to untie the mauve bow of 
her hood with reddened, cold fingers. She offered her 
cheek to Dasha, but receiving no kiss, she threw off 
her hood with a shake of the head and with her grey 
eyes looked intently at her sister. 

“Has anything happened here? Have you quarrelled?” 
she asked in a deep, low voice, always so charmingly sweet. 

Dasha’s gaze was fixed on Nikolai Ivanovitch’s leather 
galoshes, about which they used to say at home that 
they walked of themselves; they now stood like a couple 
of orphans. Dasha’s chin quivered. 

“It’s nothing. Nothing has happened.” 

Ekaterina Dmitrievna slowly unfastened the large 
buttons of her squirrel coat, which she threw off, re¬ 
vealing her bare shoulders. She looked so warm and 
soft and tired. Bending down to undo her gaiters, she 
said: “We couldn’t find a motor at first and I got my 
feet wet!” 

Dasha, still staring at Nikolai Ivanovitch’s galoshes, 
asked coldly, “Where have you been, Katia?” 

“At some literary supper, my dear, but I don’t know 
in whose honour it was given, upon my word. The 
usual thing. And I’m dead tired and sleepy.” 

She went into the dining-room, where she threw her 
leather handbag on to the table and, wiping her nose, 
asked, “Who’s been tearing the flowers? And where’s 
Nikolai Ivanovitch?” 

Dasha was nonplussed. No matter from what angle 
she regarded her sister, she did not seem a whit like the 

[271 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


abandoned woman in the picture. She did not seem 
strange to her; on the contrary, she was so particularly 
dear and sweet tonight that she wanted to caress her all 
over. But gathering all her courage and digging her 
nails into the tablecloth at the exact spot where Nik¬ 
olai Ivanovitch had eaten his omelette, she said: 

“Katial” 

“What is it, my dear?” 

“I know everything.” 

“What do you know? What has happened, in God's 
name?” 

Ekaterina Dmitrievna sat down by the table, her 
knees touching Dasha’s legs, and looked her curiously 
up and down. 

“Nikolai Ivanovitch has told me all.” 

She did not see her sister’s face, did not know what 
was passing within her. 

After a silence which seemed so long that one must 
die of it, Ekaterina Dmitrievna said angrily: 

“What shocking thing has Nikolai Ivanovitch been 
saying about me?” 

“You know, Katia.” 

“I don’t.” 

The words fell from her like an icicle. 

Dasha threw herself at her feet. 

“Then it’s not true? Katia, my dear, beautiful sister, 
it isn’t true, is it?” And she began to shower kisses 
on Katia’s warm, scented hands with the tiny blue 
veins running along them like rivulets. 

“Of course, it’s not true,” Ekaterina Dmitrievna re¬ 
plied, closing her eyes wearily. “You’re going to cry 
now and your eyes will be red tomorrow and your nose 
swollen.” 

She lifted Dasha and for a long time pressed her 

[28] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


lips against her hair. “I’m so stupid/' Dasha mumbled 
into her breast. But at this moment, from behind the 
study door, Nikolai Ivanovitch’s voice said loudly and 
deliberately: 

“She is lying." 

The sisters turned round quickly, but the door was 
shut. 

“Go to bed, my child," Ekaterina Dmitrievna said. 
“Til go and clear up the situation. A pleasant job, 
when I can barely stand." 

She led Dasha to her room and made the sign of the 
cross over her, then she returned to the dining-room, 
snatched up her handbag, rearranged the combs in her 
hair and with her finger knocked softly on the study 
door. 

“Open the door, Nikolai." 

There was a sinister silence, then a snort and a turn 
of the key. Ekaterina Dmitrievna entered to see her 
husband’s broad back moving towards the table, near 
which he sat down on a leather armchair, rested his 
elbows on the arms of it, and taking up an ivory paper- 
knife, he savagely passed it along the back of a book 
(a novel by Wassermann entitled “A Man of Forty"). 

All this was done as though Ekaterina Dmitrievna 
were not in the room. 

She sat down on the couch, pulled her skirt over her 
legs, put her handkerchief into her handbag, which she 
shut with a snap. At the sound the tuft of hair on the 
top of Nikolai Ivanovitch’s head trembled. 

“There is one thing I don’t understand," she said. 
“You are free to think what you choose, but please 
don’t initiate Dasha into your moods." 

At this he turned quickly in his chair and stretching 
out his neck and beard, said, barely moving his lips: 

[29] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


“You have the impertinence to call this my mood?” 

“I don’t understand you.” 

“Hm! You don’t understand! You understand well 
enough how to behave like a woman of the streets!” 

At these words Ekaterina Dmitrievna opened her lips 
slightly. She looked at her husband’s purple, perspiring 
face, distorted with rage, and said quietly: 

“Since when did you learn to speak to me disrespect¬ 
fully?” 

“I humbly beg your pardon, but I can’t talk in any 
other way. I want to know the details.” 

“What details?” 

“Don’t lie to me, to my face.” 

“Oh, it’s about that, is it?” From exhaustion Ekate¬ 
rina Dmitrievna rolled her large eyes. “The other day 
I said some absurd thing or other to you. ... I had for¬ 
gotten all about it.” 

“With whom did it happen?” 

“I don’t know.” 

“For the second time, don’t lie to me.” 

“I’m not lying. There’s no fun in lying to you. I did 
say something; I’d say anything when I’m angry, but 
I’d forgotten all about it.” 

Though Nikolai Ivanovitch’s face was stony at these 
words, his heart leapt with joy. “Thank God! She 
was lying about herself.” He was now safe to believe 
nothing, to ease his mind. 

He got up from his chair, walked up and down the 
room, then stopped in the middle of the carpet, and 
flourishing the ivory paper-knife in the air, he began 
a tirade about the decline of the family, loose morals, 
and now forgotten sacred duties of women, wives, 
mothers of children and husbands’ helpmates. He re¬ 
proached Ekaterina Dmitrievna with lack of spiritual 

[30 1 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


interests, with wanton spending of money, which he 
earned with his blood (“not the blood, but the wagging 
of the tongue,” thought Ekaterina Dmitrievna), nay, 
more than blood, with the whole of his nervous energy. 
He reproached her with her careless way of choosing 
her friends, with disorder in the house, with her passion 
for “that idiot” the Great Mogul and with “those dis¬ 
gusting pictures in your bourgeois drawing-room, that 
make me sick.” 

Nikolai Ivanovitch completely unburdened himself. 

It was four o’clock in the morning. When her husband 
had ceased, Ekaterina Dmitrievna said: 

“There is nothing more loathsome than a fat, hysterical 
man.” 

She rose and went into her bedroom. 

Nikolai Ivanovitch was not even hurt by these words. 
He undressed slowly and hung his clothes on the back 
of a chair; then he wound his watch and crept into his 
clean bed, made for him on the couch since yesterday. 

“We live badly. We must alter our way of life. It’s 
not well, not well,” he thought and then opened a book 
to calm his nerves for the coming sleep, but instantly 
put it down and listened. All was still in the house. 
Then he heard some one blow her nose. At the sound 
his heart beat fast. “She is crying,” he thought. “I 
suppose I said too much.” 

And when he recalled the scene and how Katia had sat 
and listened to him, he grew immeasurably sorry for her. 
He raised himself on his elbow about to get out of bed, 
but a dreadful weariness crept over his body as though 
from many days’ exhaustion. His head dropped on the 
pillow and he fell fast asleep. 

Alone in her neat room, Dasha took the combs out of 
her hair and shook her head so that all the pins flew 

[31] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


out at once. She scattered her clothes over the chairs, 
jumped into her white bed and tucked the clothes right 
up to her chin. She half closed her eyes. “How nice!” 
she thought, “there’s nothing to worry about now; I 
can sleep.” She could see a hobgoblin face from out 
of the corner of her eye. She curled up and embraced 
the pillow. A sweet sleep was about to descend on her, 
when suddenly she could hear Katia’s voice saying quite 
distinctly, “Of course, it’s not true!” Dasha opened 
her eyes. “I never breathed a word to Katia. I only 
asked her if it were true or not, but she replied as if 
she knew what I was referring to.” The consciousness 
“Katia has deceived me” cut through her like a knife. 
Then recalling all the details of their conversation, she 
was convinced that she had been deceived. She was very 
upset. Katia had been untrue to her husband, but de¬ 
ceiving, sinning, lying had made her even more fasci¬ 
nating. The blind only would fail to see that new curious, 
weary gentleness about her. And her lies are enough to 
make one mad or to fall in love with her. But she is 
a sinner! “Oh, God, I can’t understand it!” 

Dasha was confused and excited. She drank some 
water, lighted the lamp and put it out again, and until 
morning she tossed about in bed, feeling that she could 
not blame Katia, nor could she understand what she had 
done. 

Ekaterina Dmitrievna, too, could not sleep that night. 
She was lying on her back, helpless, her arms stretched 
out on the silk counterpane, and without wiping her 
tears, she wept copiously. Things were not well with 
her; she felt confused and unclean and could do nothing 
to alter it. She would never be like Dasha—spirited 
and severe. She wept, too, because Nikolai Ivanovitch 
had called her a woman of the streets and her drawing- 

[32] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


room bourgeois. And she wept still more bitterly when 
she remembered how last night Alexis Alexeyevitch 
Bezsonov had taken her in a fast-driven cab to some 
hotel outside the town, and there, without knowing or 
loving her, without feeling in any way near and dear 
to her, he had shamelessly and leisurely possessed himself 
of her, as though she had been a dummy, one of those 
pink dummies exhibited in the window of Madame Du- 
clet’s Parisian hat shop on the Morskaya. 


\ 


[33] 


V 


In a newly built house on the Vasiliev Island, on the 
fifth floor, in a flat belonging to Ivan Ilyitch Teliegin, 
an engineer, were the premises of the so-called Central 
Station for Combating the Commonplace. 

Teliegin had taken the flat for a year, at the end of a 
lease, at a cheap rent. He had reserved one room for 
himself, and the others, furnished with iron bedsteads, N 
pine tables and chairs, he had let to other lively bachelors. 
These had been found for him by his friend and school 
chum, Peter Petrovitch Sapojkov. 

They included Alexander Ivanovitch Jirov, a law 
student; Antoshka Arnoldov, a journalist; Valet, an art¬ 
ist, and a young girl, Elisaveta Kievna by name, who 
had not yet found a vocation in life to suit her taste. 

The lodgers rose late, at the hour when Teliegin usu¬ 
ally came home for luncheon, and each would leisurely 
begin the daily round. Arnold Arnoldov would take 
a tram to the Nevsky to a certain cafe where he picked up 
news and wrote his “copy,” Valet would usually proceed 
to work on his own portrait, while Sapojkov would lock 
himself in to work, that is, to pace the room with ex¬ 
clamations, being the preparations for his speeches and 
articles on the new art. Jirov would go in to Elisaveta 
Kievna to discuss the problems of life in a soft, purring 
voice. Jirov wrote verses, but was too conceited to let 
any one see them. Elisaveta Kievna considered him a 
genius. 

Besides conversing with Jirov and the other lodgers, 

in] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


Elisaveta Kievna knitted squares in different coloured 
wools, which were not intended for any special purpose, 
and sang Little Russian songs, out of tune and in a 
deep, powerful voice, or she dressed her hair in some 
wonderful way, or, tired of singing and dressing her 
hair, she would let it loose down her back and lie down 
on her bed with a book, which she devoured until her 
head ached. 

Elisaveta Kievna was a tall, good-looking girl with 
rosy cheeks and short-sighted eyes that seemed almost 
as if they had been pencilled. She dressed so badly that 
even Teliegin’s lodgers remonstrated. 

When a new person came to the house, she would in¬ 
vite him to her room and a conversation would begin, 
reaching to such heights and abysses as to make the head 
go round. Had not her interlocutor a strong desire 
to commit some crime? she would ask. Could he not 
for the mere sensation of the thing, kill her, Elisaveta 
Kievna? Had he not that feeling of “self-provocation,” 
a quality she held all remarkable people possessed? 

Teliegin’s lodgers even fixed a list of these questions 
on her door, which gratified her and caused her to 
laugh a great deal. She was a girl dissatisfied with 
everything, who expected “revolutions” to happen and 
“terrible events” that would make life so interesting 
that one would live with every part of one’s being and not 
go about bored with one’s hair down one’s back. 

Teliegin was greatly amused by his lodgers, whom 
he thought worthy people, but cranks, and for lack of 
time he entered little into their diversions. At any rate, 
he was quite satisfied even when they borrowed small 
sums of money from him (he had not much himself) 
or paid for their rooms by verses, portraits, or simply by 
a heart-to-heart talk. 


[35 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


One day, at Christmas, Peter Petrovitch Sapojkov 
gathered the lodgers together and said to them: 

“Comrades, the time has come to act. There are many 
of us, but we are scattered. Until now we have acted 
separately and timidly. We must now close up the 
ranks and strike a blow at bourgeois society. First of 
all we must form ourselves into an executive group and 
then we must issue a proclamation. I have it here. 
‘We are the new Columbuses! We are the ingenious in¬ 
stigators! We are the seed of the new humanity! We 
demand from the bloated bourgeois society that it cast 
away all its prejudices. Henceforth there are no vir¬ 
tues. The family, social respectability and marriage 
must go. We demand it. Men and women must be 
naked, free and happy. Sexual relationship is the inher¬ 
itance of society. Boys and girls, men and women, come 
out of your cramped dens, go naked and happy, and 
sing and dance beneath the sun of the wild beast!” 

Then Sapojkov said that it was necessary to issue a 
futurist journal under the title of “The Dish of the 
Gods,” the money for which would be given partly by 
Teliegin, and the rest—some three thousand—they must 
snatch from the jaws of the bourgeoisie. 

This is how there came to be formed “The Central Sta¬ 
tion for Combating the Commonplace,” a title invented 
by Teliegin, who, returning from the works, laughed till 
the tears came when he heard of Sapojkov’s scheme. 
Soon after they set to work to bring out the first number 
of “The Dish of the Gods.” Several rich patrons—ad¬ 
vocates—and Sashka Sakelman himself even, as though in 
fear of being considered behind the times, supplied the 
required three thousand. Linen note-paper was ordered 
with the incomprehensible heading “Centrifugue” printed 
on it, then invitations were sent out to contributors and 

[36 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


a general request made for material. Valet, the artist, 
suggested that Sapojkov’s room, which had been turned 
into the editorial room, should be decorated with carica¬ 
tures. He accordingly drew on the walls twelve por¬ 
traits of himself. The question of furniture required 
long consideration. Elisaveta Kievna suggested that the 
editorial staff should lie on rugs. In the end it was de¬ 
cided to remove from the room everything but a large 
table, which was pasted over with golden paper; visitors 
were expected to stand. 

With the advent of the first number “The Dish of the 
Gods” was the talk of the town. Some were amazed, 
others maintained that there was some deeper significance 
in it and that in the near future Pushkin would have to be 
consigned to the archives. Chirva, the critic, was beside 
himself; in “The Dish of the Gods” he had been called a 
scoundrel. Ekaterina Dmitrievna immediately took out a 
subscription for a whole year and decided to invite the 
futurists to her Tuesday at-homes. 

The “Central Station” sent Peter Petrovitch to sup 
with the Smokovnikovs. He appeared in a dirty coat 
of green fustian, hired from a theatrical shop, from the 
play “Manon Lescaut.” Sapojkov purposely ate a great 
deal at supper and laughed so loudly that the sound was 
unpleasant to his own ears; he sought to insult Chirva, 
but under the influence of his “magnetic” eye, he re¬ 
frained and contented himself by being unpleasant to the 
hostess, saying, “Your fish had a very soul ,in it.” 
Then he threw himself back and began to smoke, steady¬ 
ing his pince-nez on his perspiring nose. 

On the whole, more had been expected of him and 
when he had gone Ekaterina Dmitrievna said, “Well, 
what do you think? There is something clever about 
him, I feel sure.” 


[37] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


After the publication of the second number it was re¬ 
solved to hold at-homes called “Splendid Blasphemies.” 
To one of these “blasphemies” Dasha had come. 

The front door was opened by Jirov, who instantly 
busied himself taking off Dasha’s galoshes, coat, even 
picking a thread off her cloth dress. Dasha wondered 
why everything smelt of cabbage in the hall and why the 
corners were unswept. Slipping sideways along the cor¬ 
ridor to the room where the “blasphemy” was held, he 
asked Dasha, “What perfume do you use? It has an 
extraordinarily pleasant smell.” 

Then Dasha wondered at the blatancy of it all. It is 
true that the walls were covered with eyes, noses, hands, 
ignominious figures, falling sky-scrapers, in a word, all 
that comprised a portrait of Vasili Veniamovitch Valet, 
who was standing there silently with zigzags and patches 
drawn on his cheeks. It is true that verses were read 
in exaggeratedly passionate voices about motor cars glid¬ 
ing along the vaulted skies, about “spitting on the heaven¬ 
ly old syphilitic,” about young jaws which the author 
had cracked like nuts, about church domes and some 
head-splitting, incomprehensible grasshopper in an over¬ 
coat, with a Baedeker and field-glasses, who jumped out 
of the window into the street. To Dasha all these ter¬ 
rors seemed poor and too obvious. She was only at¬ 
tracted to Teliegin. During the interval he went up to 
Dasha and asked her with a timid smile whether she 
would like some tea and sandwiches. 

“Our tea and sausage are unusually good.” 

He had a sunburnt face, clean-shaven and simple, and 
his kindly, blue eyes squinted slightly from nervousness. 

Dasha, to give him pleasure, got up and went into 
the dining-room. There on the table, amidst dirty dishes, 
was a plate of sandwiches and a bent samovar. Teliegin 

[ 38 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


instantly collected the plates and put them on the floor 
in a corner of the room; he looked around for a cloth, 
then wiped the table with his pocket-handkerchief, poured 
Dasha out a cup of tea, and selected the “thinnest” 
sandwich. He did all this slowly, talking the while, 
as though anxious to make Dasha feel comfortable amid 
the mess. j • 

“Our housekeeping is in thorough disorder, but our 
tea and sausage are first rate, from Eliseiev’s. There 
were some sweets, but they are all gone,” he compressed 
his lips and looked at Dasha; fear appeared in his blue 
eyes and then a resolve, “unless you’ll allow me?” and 
he pulled two caramels out of his waistcoat pocket. 

“One wouldn’t be lost with a man like that,” Dasha 
thought, and again to give him pleasure, said: 

“They are my favourite caramels.” 

Teliegin sat down sideways opposite Dasha and fixed 
his gaze on the mustard-pot. His broad forehead wrinkled 
with the strain. He carefully pulled out his pocket-hand¬ 
kerchief and with a corner of it wiped the sides of his 
nose, not daring, evidently, to wipe the whole of his face. 

Dasha’s lips smiled involuntarily. This big, handsome 
man was so shy and uncertain of himself that he was 
ready to hide behind the mustard-pot. Somewhere—in 
Arzamas, she imagined—he must have a sweet little old 
mother, who wrote him severe letters about not letting 
the town laundresses lose his linen, about his “incorri¬ 
gible habit of lending money to any fool that asked for 
it,” about how it was only “through modesty and dili¬ 
gence, my dear child, that you will gain the respect of 
people.” And he, no doubt, sighed over these letters, 
thinking how far off he was from perfection. Dasha 
felt a tenderness for him. 

“Where do you work?” she asked. Teliegin raised his 

[ 39 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 

/ 

eyes, saw her smile and smiled, too. “He understands,” 
Dasha thought. 

“At the Obukhovsky works,” he said. “We make cyl¬ 
inders for motors and other complicated things.” 

“Is your work interesting?” 

“I can’t say. To my mind, all work is interesting.” 

“I think the workmen must like you very much.” 

“I’ve never thought about it, but I don’t suppose they 
do. Why should they? I am very severe with them. We 
get on capitally, for all that.” 

“Do tell me, did you like all that went on in the other 
room?” 

Ivan Ilyitch’s lips spread into a broad smile; wrinkles 
disappeared from his forehead and he laughed aloud. 

“Scamps! hooligans 1 wonderful scamps! I’m very 
pleased with my lodgers, Daria Dmitrievna. You come 
home worried from the works and some nonsense or 
other is sure to greet you here. . . . It’s amusing to 
think of the next day.” 

“I hate these ‘blasphemies,’ ” Dasha said solemnly. “I 
think they are horrid and disgusting.” 

He looked her wonderingly in the eyes. “I very much 
dislike them,” she reiterated. 

“Of course, I’m more to blame than any one,” Ivan 
Ilyitch said pensively. “I encouraged them. To invite 
people and make them listen to indecencies all the eve¬ 
ning, is certainly. ... I must thank you, Daria Dmit¬ 
rievna, for being so frank about it. I am sorry it was so 
unpleasant for you.” 

Dasha smiled, looking straight into his face. She 
could say anything to this man, who was almost a stranger 
to her, so at ease did she feel with him. 

“It seems to me, Ivan Ilyitch, that you ought to like 
quite other things. I think you are quite a good sort. 

[ 40 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


You are much better than you think you are, really.” 

Dasha’s elbow was on the table, her chin supported on 
her hand, her little finger touching her lips. Her eyes 
laughed; they seemed to him terrifying, so disturbingly 
beautiful were they, grey and large and cold. Ivan 
Ilyitch, in great confusion, bending and unbending a tea¬ 
spoon, tried to efface himself altogether. 

Fortunately for him Elisaveta Kievna came into the 
room just then. She wore a Turkish shawl and her 
plaited hair was twisted over the ears into two horns. 
She gave Dasha a long soft hand, introduced herself and 
sat down. 

“I have heard a lot about you from Jirov,” she said. 
“This evening I have been studying your face. You 
look as if you have been spoiled, which is good.” 

“Would you like some cold tea, Lisa?” Teliegin hastily 
intervened. 

“No, Teliegin; you know I never take tea. Well, you 
are, no doubt, asking yourself what strange creature is 
this talking to you. I am nobody, nothing; not even a 
female. Stupid and unpleasant in ordinary life.” 

Ivan Ilyitch, standing by the table, turned away in 
despair. Dasha lowered her eyes. Elisaveta Kievna, ob¬ 
serving her with a smile, continued. 

“You are smart, well-off and pretty. You need not 
deny it, for you know you are. Dozens of men are in 
love with you. How dreadful to think that it will end in 
such a commonplace way. Some base man will walk 
you off and you will bear him children and die. How 
very dull!” 

Dasha’s lips trembled at the affront. 

“I do not intend to be other than commonplace,” she 
said, “and I fail to understand why you are so interested 
in my future.” 


[ 41 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


Elisaveta Kievna gave a broader smile, but her eyes 
were sad and compassionate. 

“I should have warned you that I am nobody as a 
human being and loathsome as a woman. Very few 
people can stand me and those only out of pity, like 
Teliegin.” 

‘‘What damned nonsense you are talking, Lisa,” he 
muttered, not raising his head. 

“I make no demands on you, Teliegin. Calm yourself.” 
And again she turned to Dasha. “Have you ever seen 
a storm on the Black Sea ? I have lived through a storm. 
There was a man whom I loved and he hated me, nat¬ 
urally. When the storm began I said to him ‘Come’ and 
sprang into the boat. Out of spite he jumped in after 
me. We were carried out to the open sea. How jolly 
it was! damnably jolly! He sat there all green. I 
undressed quite naked and said to him, ‘Tie me to the 
mast! ...” 

“Look here, Lisa,” Teliegin interposed, screwing up 
his lips and nose, “you know it is not true. None of this 
happened. I know it didn’t.” 

Elisaveta Kievna looked at him with an incomprehen¬ 
sible smile and suddenly began to laugh. She put her 
arms on the table, hid her face in them and laughed, so 
that her full shoulders shook. 

It seemed to Dasha that the whole absurd conversation 
had been like a scratching upon glass. She rose and 
told Teliegin that she wanted to go home, if possible, 
without taking leave of any one. 

Ivan Ilyitch helped Dasha into her coat as carefully 
as though the coat, too, formed part of her being; he 
kept striking matches as he accompanied her down the 
dark staircase, and apologized that it was so dark, slip¬ 
pery and draughty. He walked with her as far as the 

[ 42 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


street corner, put her into a cab, driven by an old man 
and drawn by an old horse, both of whom were cov¬ 
ered with snow. For a long while he stood there, without 
coat or hat, watching the low sleigh with the severe 
maiden inside it, fade away in the yellow fog. Then 
slowly he walked back to the house and into the din¬ 
ing-room. By the table, just as he had left her, with 
her face on her arm, was Elisaveta Kievna. Teliegin 
scratched his chin and said with a frown: “Lisa.” 

She quickly, too quickly, raised her head and looked 
him straight in the eyes. 

“Lisa, I’m sorry, but why do you always say things that 
make one ashamed and uncomfortable?” 

“You’ve fallen in love,” Elisaveta Kievna said quietly, 
still looking at him with her sad, short-sighted eyes that 
seemed almost as if they had been pencilled. “I can see 
the signs. What a bore!” 

“It’s absolutely untrue. And I find your remarks 
extremely offensive.” 

“I’m sorry. People who’ve done wrong are beaten 
and told not to cry.” She rose slowly and walked out, 
dragging the Turkish shawl behind her on the dusty 

floor. 

Ivan Ilyitch went into his room, which he paced to 
and fro for some time. Then he returned to the dining¬ 
room, poured himself out some cold tea and was about 
to sit down, when suddenly he recollected himself and 
gazed at the chair in horror. It was the chair on which 
Daria Dimitrievna had only just been sitting. It might 
be absurd and sentimental, but the chair must be re¬ 
moved from that place. Teliegin shrugged his shoulders 
and carried the chair into his own room, where he put 
it in a corner. Then he took hold of his nose with the 
whole palm of his hand and laughed aloud. 


[ 43 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


“What nonsense! What utter nonsense!” 

To Dasha the encounter had been one among many; 
she had met a very nice man and that was all. She was 
at an age when people see nor hear well, sound being 
drowned by the quick rush of the blood, while the eyes, 
as in a mirror, can see in anything, be it a human face 
or a glossy leaf on a tree, only their own reflection. At 
such an age only deformity can strike the imagination, 
whereas handsome people, alluring landscapes, the hum¬ 
ble beauty of art are looked upon as the usual retinue of 
a queen of nineteen. 

It was not thus with Ivan Ilyitch. Now that more 
than a week had gone by since Dasha’s visit, he won¬ 
dered how imperceptibly (he had not shaken hands with 
her at first) and simply (she had come in, sat down and 
placed her muff on her knees) she had come to their 
bare flat, this girl with the soft, rosy complexion, in her 
dark dress and her ash-coloured hair, dressed high on 
the head, and her proud, childlike mouth. It seemed 
incomprehensible that he had talked to her calmly of 
sausages from Eliseiev’s. And he had given her the 
warm caramels which had lain in his pocket to eat. 
Brute that he was! 

Ivan Ilyitch had, during his life (he had recently 
reached his twenty-ninth year), been in love six times. 
The first, while he was still a realist, in Kazan, was a 
buxom girl—Marusia Khvoyeva, the daughter of a vet¬ 
erinary surgeon, who for some time now fruitlessly paced 
the main street at four o’clock in the afternoon in her 
plush coat But Marusia had had no time to waste; 
Ivan Ilyitch was thrown over, and without any of the 
intermediate stages, he transferred his affection to the 
star, Ada Tilly, who astonished the natives of Kazan 
by appearing in all the operettas, no matter to what period 

[ 44 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


they belonged, in a bathing-costume. The management 
even announced this feature in their posters, “The Fa¬ 
mous Ada Tilly with her beautiful legs.” 

Ivan Ilyitch was so carried away that he even went 
to her house with a bunch of flowers, which he had 
picked in the town garden. Ada Tilly gave the flowers 
to some shaggy dog to smell and remarked that the local 
food had upset her digestion, and would Ivan Ilyitch 
mind going to the chemist’s for her ? 

Then, when a student in Petersburg, he was at¬ 
tracted to a medical student, a Miss Vilbushevitch, and 
used to meet her in the anatomy theatre, but nothing 
came of the affair and Miss Vilbushevitch eventually 
went away to a post in the Zemstvo. 

On one occasion Ivan Ilyitch fell ( in love with a 
shopgirl from some big establishment—Zinotchka was 
her name—and in his tenderness and agitation he did 
everything she asked him to do, but on the whole he 
sighed with relief when Zinotchka, together with the 
department of her firm, went away to Moscow. With 
her departure there passed away that continuous feel¬ 
ing of unfulfilled obligations. 

His last feeling of sentiment took place in the sum¬ 
mer of last year, in the month of June. On the op¬ 
posite side of the courtyard on which his window 
looked out was another window, at which every day be¬ 
fore sunset a thin, pale girl would stand, brushing her 
one and only dress, of a reddish colour. She would 
put it on afterwards and go and sit in the park. 

It was in the park, on the Petersburg side, that Ivan 
Ilyitch first spoke to her and from that day, every 
evening they would walk together, admiring the Peters¬ 
burg sunsets and talking about things in general. 

The girl,. Olia Komarova, worked in a notary’s of- 

[ 45 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


fice; she was lonely and ailing and coughed all the 
time. They would talk about this cough, about her 
illness, about how miserable it was for a person to be 
alone in the evenings, about her friend Kira, who fell 
in love with a nice man and went away to the Crimea. 
Their conversations were dull. Olia Komarova had so 
little faith in her fortune that without any restraint she 
would tell Ivan Ilyitch her most intimate thoughts, even 
saying that she looked forward to his falling in love 
with her and taking her away to the Crimea. 

Ivan Ilyitch was sorry for the girl and respected her, 
but he could not love her, though sometimes, after their 
talks, when lying on his couch in the twilight, he would 
think what an egoist he was, how sensual and brutal 
and bad. 

In the autumn, Olia Komarova caught a chill and fell 
ill with pneumonia. Ivan Ilyitch took her to a hospital 
and from thence to the cemetery. Before her death 
she asked him: 

“If I get well, will you marry me?” 

“On my honour, I will,” he had replied. 

His feelings for Dasha had nothing in common with 
his former sentiments. Elisaveta Kievna had said that 
he had fallen in love. But you can fall in love only with 
an object possible of attainment; you cannot fall in love 
with a statue, with a cloud or with Pushkin’s poetry. 
You can only dream about these things. 

He could not be in love with Dasha because he felt 
how unattainable she was. He could not even dream 
about Dasha because she was a living being who drank 
tea, ate sausage and shook hands in a firm, hearty kind 
of way. For Dasha he experienced a third, peculiar 
feeling, which he was unable to analyze; it was the more 
incomprehensible in that there was so little reason for 

[ 46 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


it—just a few moments’ conversation and a chair in 
the corner of his room. 

The feeling was not even very strong or great, but 
Ivan Ilyitch now wanted to be different, more particular, 
and he began to take careful stock of himself. 

“If you only think of it, I shall soon be thirty and 
so far I’ve lived as the grass grows. Terrible neglect, 
egoism and lack of discrimination of people. A filthy 
business, on the whole. I must reform before it’s too 
late.” 

At the end of March, on one of those early spring 
days, which had dawned over the town, white and warm 
in its covering of snow, when from early morning the 
water could be heard dripping from roofs and gutters, 
and rushing down drain-pipes, making the green water- 
barrels beneath them overflow, when the snow was be¬ 
ing cleared from the streets and vapour rose from the 
asphalt, on which dry patches appeared, your winter’s 
coat hung heavily on your shoulders and you looked 
around and saw some man with a pointed beard, walk¬ 
ing along in his jacket only, and every one looked at 
him and smiled, and you raised your head, and above, 
the sky was bottomless and blue, as though it had just 
been washed with water—it was on such a day, at half 
past three, that Ivan Ilyitch left the engineering office of 
Simens and Galske, unbuttoned his skunk coat, blinked 
his eyes from the sun and thought: 

“It’s good to be alive on such a day.” 

It was at that moment that he saw Dasha. She was 
in a blue spring coat, walking at the edge of the pave¬ 
ment, swinging her left arm, which held a parcel; on 
her blue hat some white daisies bobbed up and down; 
the expression of her face was pensive and sad. She 
was coming from the direction where the puddles, the 

[ 47 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


tram-lines, the glass, the backs of the passers-by and the 
ground beneath their feet, the spokes of the carriage 
wheels were shining from the blue depths of the huge 
sun, rugged and sparkling in all its spring brilliancy. 

Dasha seemed to have emerged from the blue and 
the light, and passed and disappeared in the crowd. 
Ivan Ilyitch stood for a long time staring in the direc¬ 
tion in which she had gone. His heart beat like a ham¬ 
mer. The air was heavy, scented, intoxicating. 

Ivan Ilyitch walked slowly to the corner of the street 
and putting his hands behind his back, stood for a long 
while looking at the posters on the hoarding. “New 
and exciting adventures of Jack the Ripper of stomachs 
of 2400 metres,” he read, feeling that he understood noth¬ 
ing but was happy as he had never been happy in his life 
before. 

As he left the hoarding, for the second time he saw 
Dasha. She had turned and was walking towards him, 
just as before, with her bobbing daisies and her parcel 
at the edge of the pavement. He approached her, raised 
his hat and said: 

“Daria Dmitrievna, I shan't be detaining you, I hope, 
by saying how do you do?” 

She almost stared. Then she looked up at him 
with her cold, blue eyes, in which the green pupils 
sparkled in the light. She smiled sweetly, held out her 
hand in a white kid glove and gave his a firm and 
friendly pressure. 

“How lucky to meet you! I was thinking of you 
today, I was really!” Dasha shook her head and the 
little white daisies bobbed to and fro. 

“I had some business on the Nevsky, but now I’ve the 
whole day free. What a day it is!” . . . Ivan Ilyitch 
pursed up his lips and tried his hardest not to smile. 

[ 48 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 

“Could you walk home with me, Ivan Ilyitch?” Dasha 
asked. 

“Of course, I can.” 

They turned down a side street and walked in the 
shade. 

“Ivan Ilyitch, you won’t think it strange if I were 
to ask you something? But I know I can ask you 
anything. Only you must answer me at once, without 
consideration and frankly. As I ask, you must reply. ,, 

Her face was troubled and her brows were drawn. 

“It had always seemed to me like this,” she waved 
her hand in the air. “There are thieves and liars and 
murderers and women of the streets and they exist 
just like snakes and spiders and mice—I’m afraid of 
mice—and that all people are a little funny, with their 
weaknesses and crankiness, but that all are good and 
true. Now look at that girl coming towards us. Just 
as she seems so she must be. The whole world seems 
to me to be painted in wonderful colours. Do you under¬ 
stand what I mean?” 

“It’s most interesting, Daria Dmitrievna. ...” 

“Wait a moment. Now the picture seems to have 
tumbled about me and I’m suffocating in darkness. A 
person may be charming and lovable, yet at the same 
time may sin in a terrible way. It’s not merely a 
question of stealing cakes from a counter, but to commit 
a real sin—to lie.” Dasha turned away; her chin 
trembled. “To commit adultery, and a married woman, 
too. May one sin, then, Ivan Ilyitch?” 

“No. One mustn’t.” 

“Why not ?” 

“One can’t say off-hand, but I feel one shouldn’t.” 

“And don’t you think I feel so, too? Since two 
o’clock I’ve been wandering about the streets in despair. 

[ 49 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


It’s such a beautiful day, so clear, and I can’t help feel¬ 
ing that in all these houses, behind the curtains, unen¬ 
lightened people are hidden, and I must go in to them, 
don’t you see?” 

“I don’t,” he replied hastily. 

“I must and will go to them, because life is there, 
behind the curtains and not here. Oh, how wretched 
I am! I suppose I’m still a stupid little girl and this 
town was not meant for little girls, but for grown people.” 

Dasha stopped at the steps of the house and with the 
tip of her shoe, began to move over the asphalt a cig¬ 
arette box some one had thrown away, on which was the 
picture of a green woman with smoke coming out of 
her mouth. Ivan Ilyitch, looking at the patent leather 
tip of Dasha’s foot, felt how Dasha was dissolving like 
a snowflake, was disappearing like a mist. He wanted 
to keep her, but how could he? The force by which 
he could have kept her was crushing his heart and grip¬ 
ping his throat. But to Dasha this feeling of his had 
no more significance than the shadow on the wall, for 
he himself was no more than dear, kind Ivan Ilyitch. 

“Well, good-bye, and thank you so much, Ivan Ilyitch. 
You’re very kind. I do not feel any better for our con¬ 
versation, but thank you, all the same. You did under¬ 
stand me, didn’t you? What things there are in the 
world! One can’t do anything, though; I suppose one 
must be grown-up. Do come and see us when you 
can.” She smiled, shook his hand, went up the steps 
and disappeared in the darkness. 

Dasha opened the door of her room and stopped in 
astonishment. There was a smell of fresh flowers and 
she instantly noticed on her dressing-table a basket with 
a tall handle and a blue bow and rushed up and buried 
her face in it. They were Parma violets, several large 

[ 50 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


bunches, somewhat squashed and damp, with a tender 
smell of earth and spring about them. 

Dasha was excited. Since the morning she had 
longed for something but did not know what, and now 
she realized that it had been violets. But who could have 
sent them? He had thought about her so much that 
he knew what she wanted even better than herself? 
The bow, though, seemed out of place. Untying it, Dasha 
thought: 

“She may be restless, but she’s not a bad girl. No 
matter what little sins you may be planning for your¬ 
selves, she’ll go her own way. You may think she 
holds her head too high. But there are some people 
who like it and would think the better of her.” 

Inside the bow there was a note written on thick 
paper in a large, unfamiliar handwriting, containing 
the two words, “Love, Love.” On the other side was 
printed “The Nice Flower Nursery.” Some one must 
have written in the shop “Love, love.” Dasha, with 
the basket in her hand, went out into the passage and 
called: 

“Mogul, who brought me these flowers?” 

The Great Mogul looked at the basket and sighed, 
as though none of those things concerned her. 

“A boy from the shop brought them to Ekaterina 
Dmitrievna and she asked me to put them in your 
room.” 

“Did the boy say who sent them?” 

“He didn’t say anything, but only asked me to give 
them to the mistress.” 

Dasha went back to her room and stood by the 
window with her hands behind her. Through the glass 
she could see the sunset; behind the brick house op¬ 
posite it spread over the sky in green streaks. A star 

[ 51 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


appeared in the green void* glistening as though newly 
washed. Below, in the narrow street, now misty, along 
the whole length of it, simultaneously, the electric lamps 
lit up, the light of which did not yet show much. Near 
by came the hoot of a motor-car and she saw it dis¬ 
appearing down the street in the gloom. 

It was quite dark in the room and the violets smelt 
sweet. He had sent them, the man whom Katia had 
sinned with. That was quite clear. Dasha stood there 
thinking how like a fly she had fallen into the net of a 
subtle and alluring sin. It was in the fragrant scent 
of the flowers, in the two words, “Love, love/’ disturb¬ 
ing and exciting, in the gentle charm of the evening. 

Suddenly her heart began to beat fast. Dasha felt 
something tangible, something she could almost see and 
hear and touch, something forbidden and mysterious, 
that scorched her with its intense sweetness. She had 
suddenly solved the question of herself, had assumed 
freedom. There was no gainsaying that she knew what 
had happened; in that moment she was already on the 
other, side. Her severity, her icy barrier, had dissolved 
like a mist, just like the mist at the bottom of the 
street, where the motor-car had disappeared, bearing 
away the two ladies in white hats. 

Only her heart beat fast and her head was slightly 
dizzy and over her body delicious cold shivers crept 
and something seemed to sing within her, “I am alive, 
I love, the whole world is mine, mine, mine.” 

“Now listen, my friend,” Dasha said aloud, “you are 
a virgin, and you’re simply a bad character.” 

She walked over to a corner of the room, where she 
sat down in a soft armchair, and, slowly taking off the 
wrapper from a cake of chocolate, she tried to recall 
all the events of the last two weeks since Katia’s sin. 

[ 52 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


In the house nothing was changed. Katia had been 
even peculiarly gentle with Nikolai Ivanovitch. He 
went about in a happy state and was planning to build 
a country house in Finland. Dasha alone had had to 
bear “the tragedy” of these two blind people. To be the 
first to broach the subject with her sister she dared not, 
and Katia, who had always been so sensitive to Dasha's 
moods, on this occasion, seemed to notice nothing. 
Ekaterina Dmitrievna ordered for herself and Dasha new 
spring costumes for Easter, spent a great deal of time 
at tailors' and dressmakers', helped to arrange charitable 
bazaars, at Nikolai Ivanovitch’s request, organized a 
literary entertainment for the unproclaimed purpose of 
raising money for the left section of the Social Dem¬ 
ocratic party, the so-called Bolsheviks, who were starv¬ 
ing in Paris, received visitors on Thursdays as well as 
Tuesdays—in a word, had not a spare moment to herself. 

“And you’ve been a coward all the while, too timid 
to decide on anything; you’ve only been worrying about 
the moral problem, about which you understand 
nothing and never will understand until you singe your 
own wings,” Dasha thought, laughing softly to herself. 
In the dark lake into which the icy balls had fallen and 
from whence no good could be expected, there rose up, 
as often happened these days, the corrosive, sinister 
image of Bezsonov. She had solved the riddle of her¬ 
self and he dominated her thoughts. Dasha grew quiet. 
In the dark room a clock ticked. 

Somewhere in the house a distant door banged and 
she heard her sister's voice ask: “Has she been back 
long?” 

Dasha rose and went into the hall. Ekaterina Dmit¬ 
rievna instantly said to her: “Why are you so flushed ?” 

Nikolai Ivanovitch rubbed his hands hard and dropped 

[ 53 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


some witty remark about the resigned stage lover’s 
store. Dasha looked at his soft thick lips with hatred 
and followed her sister into her bedroom. There, sitting 
by the dressing-table, which was elegant and beautiful, 
like everything in her sister’s room, she listened to the 
gossip about the people they had met during their walk. 

Ekaterina Dmitrievna, as she talked, tidied the mirror 
cupboard, in which were gloves, pieces of lace, veils, silk 
slippers, all sorts of small nothings, that smelt of her 
perfumes. It appeared that Rosa Abramovna did not 
have her dresses made at Madame Duclet’s but at home 
and very badly made they were, too, that Vedrensky 
had again spoilt a case and had no money; she had 
met his wife, who complained that they found it hard 
to live. At the Timiriasevs’ they had the measles. 
Sheinberg had again parted from that hysterical creature 
of his; it was said that she tried to shoot herself in his 
flat. “And the spring has come, the spring! What a 
day it has been! People are swarming in the streets 
like intoxicated flies. Oh, yes, and whom do you think 
I’ve met? Akundin. He assured me that before very 
long we shall have a revolution. You see, the factories 
and the country are in a ferment. If only it would come 
soon! Nikolai Ivanovitch was so elated that he took 
me into the Pivato and we had a bottle of champagne 
for no other cause than in honour of the future revo¬ 
lution.” 

Dasha listened to her sister in silence, stopping and 
unstopping the crystal bottles on the table. 

“Katia,” she said suddenly, “as I am I’m no use to 
any one, don’t you see?” Ekaterina Dmitrievna, her 
hand inside a silk stocking, turned and looked intently 
at her sister. “And what is more, I’m no use to myself 
as I am. It is as though a person had taken to eating 

f 54 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


raw carrots and thought that thereby he became supe¬ 
rior to others.” 

”1 don’t understand you,” Ekaterina Dmitrievna said. 
Dasha looked at her sister’s back and sighed. 

“All are bad, every one I must be judging. One is 
stupid, another is horrid, a third is dirty. Only I am 
all right. I am out of place here and it worries me. 
I judge you, too, Katia.” 

“Why?” asked Ekaterina Dmitrievna softly, without 
turning. 

“Just think of it. I go about with my nose in the 
air, that’s the sum total of my superiority. It’s merely 
foolish and I’m tired of being a stranger among you 
all. Don’t you see, Katia, I’m very much attracted to a 
certain man.” 

Dasha had spoken with her head down; she had 
thrust a finger into one of the little crystal bottles and 
could not pull it out again. 

“I’m glad to hear it, my dear, if you like him. You’ll 
be happy. Who should be happy, if not you?” Ekate¬ 
rina Dmitrievna gave a slight sigh. 

“But you see, Katia, it’s not so simple as all that. 
According to my idea, I’m not in love with him.” 

“If you like him, you will love him.” 

“The whole trouble is that I don’t like him.” 

“But you’ve only just said that you are attracted to 
him. You’re really-” 

“Don’t quibble, Katia, dear. Do you remember the 
Englishman in Sestroretsk? I was attracted to him, 
even in love with him. But then I was more myself. 
... I used to be angry and hide myself and cry at 
night, but it all flowed off me like water. But this 
man ... I cannot even tell whether it is he. . . . Yes, 
it is he. . . . Yes, it is he. . . . He has turned my head. 

[ 55 ] 



THE ROAD TO CALVARY 

» 

... I am quite different now. I feel as though I had 
inhaled some vapour. . . . If he were to come into my 
room now, I wouldn’t stir. ...” 

“My God, Dasha, what are you saying?” 

“Isn’t that what is called sin, Katia? I feel it.” 

Ekaterina Dmitrievna sat down on the edge of her 
sister’s chair and drawing her close to herself, took her 
hot hand and kissed the palm, but Dasha gently dis¬ 
engaged herself, sighed, and resting her head on her 
hand, stared out of the dark window at the stars. 

“Who is he, Dasha?” 

“Alexis Alexeyevitch Bezsonov.” 

At this Katia sat down on the chair near by, clutched 
her throat and remained immovable. Dasha could not 
see her sister’s face, which was hidden in the shadow, 
but she felt that she had said something terrible. 

“So much the better,” she thought, turning away, 
and with this “so much the better,” she felt both re¬ 
lieved and desolate. 

“Why can’t I do what others do? For two years I 
have listened to the tale of some six hundred and sixty- 
six love affairs and in the whole of my life I have only 
been kissed once by a schoolboy in a hut on the skating 
rink.” 

She sighed heavily and ceased. Ekaterina Dmitrievna 
now sat bent, her hands dropped on her knees. 

“Bezsonov is a very wicked man,” she said. “He’s a 
terrible man, Dashenka. Do you hear me?” 

“Yes.” 

“He will break you completely.” 

“But what can I do now?” 

“I won’t allow it! Let others ... let me perish, 
but not you, not you, my dear!” 

“A crow is bad; it is black in body and soul,” Dasha 

[56] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


said laughing. “What is there bad about Bezsonov? 
Tell me/’ 

“I can't tell you. ... I don’t know. . . . But I 
shudder when I think of him.” 

“But I thought that you, too, rather liked him.” 

“Never! I hate him! The Lord preserve you from 
him!” 

“Now, Katia, my dear, you’ve really fired my curi¬ 
osity. Now I shall certainly fall into his net.” 

“What are you saying? Have you gone mad?” 

Dasha was pleased by the conversation; she seemed 
to be walking the plank on tiptoe. She was gratified 
by Katia’s excitement. She hardly thought of Bezsonov, 
but purposely began talking of her feeling towards him, 
about the occasions on which they had met, about his 
face. She so exaggerated everything as to make it 
appear that all her nights were spent in sinful thoughts 
and that she was ready to run to Bezsonov that very 
moment. At last she herself was amused. She wanted 
to take Katia by the shoulders and kiss her and say, 
“If there is a little fool, it is you, Katusha,” but Ekat¬ 
erina Dmitrievna suddenly slipped from her chair to the 
floor and seizing Dasha, she pressed her face against 
her knees, and trembling violently, she cried: 

“Forgive me! Forgive me! Dasha, forgive me!” 

Dasha was alarmed. Bending down to her sister, from 
fear and pity she, too, began to cry, and sobbing, asked 
Katia what she meant and what there was to forgive. 
But Ekaterina Dmitrievna merely clenched her teeth 
and fondled and kissed Dasha’s hands. 


[57] 


I 


VI 


At dinner,, observing the two sisters, Nikolai Ivano- 
vitch said: “Hm! Can I not be informed of the cause 
of these tears ?” 

“The cause is my own vicious mood,” Dasha in¬ 
stantly rejoined. “Don’t worry yourself, please. I know 
quite well, without your aid, that the whole of me, this 
fork included, is not worth your wife’s little finger.” 

After dinner some visitors arrived to coffee. In view 
of the family mood, Nikolai Ivanovitch decided that they 
should all go to some drinking place. Kulchok tele¬ 
phoned to a garage; Katia and Dasha were sent to 
change their dresses. Chirva arrived and hearing where 
the company was going, lost his temper. 

“After all, what suffers most from these continuous 
drinking bouts? Russian literature.” 

But he, too, was taken in the motor with the others. 

The “Northern Palmera” was noisy and packed with 
people. It was a large, low basement hall, brilliantly 
illuminated by six crystal chandeliers. The chandeliers, 
the tobacco smoke, which met them at the door, the men 
in evening dress, the bare shoulders of the women, their 
coloured wigs of green, purple and grey, the fine sprays 
s>f osprey, the precious stones, shimmering on throats 
and ears in clusters of orange, blue and ruby rays, the 
waiters, slipping in and out among the crowd, the lean 
man with the clump of clammy hair sticking to his fore¬ 
head, his uplifted arms, his magic baton, cutting the air 
by the red velvet curtains, the gleam of the brass trum- 

[ 58 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


pets were all repeated and multiplied in the walls of 
mirrors, until it seemed that in endless perspective the 
whole human race, the whole world was gathered there. 

Dasha, drawing her champagne up through a straw, 
observed the tables meanwhile. By a steaming pail 
and some fruit peel sat a clean-shaven man with pow¬ 
dered cheeks. His eyes were half closed, his lips cyni¬ 
cally compressed. He was sitting there reflecting, no 
doubt, that the time would come when the electric light 
would go out and all the people would be dead. Over 
there were a man and wife. They had probably quar¬ 
relled at home and were still snapping at each other 
in whispers, though there was a smile on the woman's 
fat face and the man was lazily shifting his cigar from 
one comer of his mouth to the other. 

The curtains trembled and parted on either side and 
a little Japanese, as small as a child, with a tragically 
wrinkled face, appeared on the platform and began to 
manipulate in the air various coloured balls, plates and 
torches. As she watched him, Dasha thought: 

“What did Katia mean by ‘Forgive me, forgive me’?” 

And suddenly a band of iron seemed to grip her head, 
her heart stopped beating. “Could it be?” She shook 
her head and sighed deeply, and without giving herself 
time to consider the significance of her “Could it be?” 
she looked across at her sister. 

Ekaterina Dmitrievna was sitting at the other end of 
the table, looking so weary and sad and beautiful that 
Dasha's eyes filled with tears. She raised her finger 
to her lips and blew on it imperceptibly. It was a sign 
agreed upon between them. Katia noticed it and gave 
a slow, gentle smile. 

About two o'clock a dispute arose as to where they 
should go next. Ekaterina Dmitrievna suggested home, 

[59] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


but Nikolai Ivanovitch ruled that he would go where 
the others went and the “others” decided to go “further 
afield” 

Just then, through the dispersing crowd, Dasha caught 
sight of Bezsonov. He was sitting with his elbow rest¬ 
ing far on the table, listening intently to Akundin, who, 
with a half-gnawed cigarette in his mouth, was saying 
something and drawing rapidly with his finger-nail on 
the tablecloth. It was on Akundin’s flying finger-nail 
that Bezsonov’s gaze was fixed. It seemed to Dasha 
that above the din she heard the words “An end, an 
end to everything,” but they were both hidden from 
view by a stout Tartar waiter. Katia and Nikolai Ivan¬ 
ovitch rose and Dasha called out; she stood for some 
moments, her curiosity aroused, excited and dishevelled. 

When they came out into the street the frosty air smelt 
unexpectedly keen and sweet. The stars twinkled in the 
dark purple sky. Some one behind Dasha said, laugh¬ 
ing, “It’s a devilishly fine night!” A motor glided up 
to the pavement and from behind it, out of the petrol 
fumes, there stepped a ragged individual, who pulled off 
his cap and with a flourish, opened the door of the car. 
Dasha stood to look at him as she stepped in. He was 
thin, had a growth of bristles on his unshaven face and 
a bitter mouth. He was shivering and pressed his elbows 
against his sides. 

“A pleasant evening, spent in the temple of luxury 
and emotional delights!” he called out bitterly in a 
hoarse voice, adroitly catching the forty-kopeck piece 
some one had thrown to him. Dasha felt that his dark, 
angry eyes had pierced through her. 

They returned home late. Dasha lay on her back in 
bed. She did not fall asleep, but seemed to lose con¬ 
sciousness of her body, so exhausted was she. 

160] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


Suddenly, with a groan, she pushed the clothes off 
her chest, sat up and opened her eyes. The sun shone 
in through the window on the floor. “Heavens! What 
a horrible thing it was!” She was so frightened that 
she nearly cried, but when she came to herself, she 
seemed to have forgotten what it was all about. Only 
in her heart there remained a pain, as from some hor¬ 
rible nightmare. 

After luncheon, Dasha went to her lectures, entered 
her name for the examination, bought some books and 
until dinner time was severe and industrious, learning by 
heart a boring course in Roman law. In the evening 
she again had to put on silk stockings (in the morn¬ 
ings it had been decided to wear cotton ones), to powder 
her arms and shoulders and to redress her hair. “I 
should like to make a bun on the nape of the neck, but 
people are all for a fashionable headdress. How can 
I make one, when my hair won’t stay up?” It was all 
very troublesome. On her new blue silk dress there 
was a stain from champagne, on the very front of it. 

Dasha grew suddenly so grieved about her dress, so 
'grieved at her wasted life that she sat down and burst 
into tears with the spoilt skirt in her hand. Nikolai 
Ivanovitch was about to come in at the door, but catch¬ 
ing sight of Dasha in her chemise and in tears, he called 
his wife. Katia rushed in, seized the dress, exclaiming, 
“We will soon get rid of this!” She called the Great 
Mogul, who came in with some benzine and hot water. 

The dress was cleaned, Dasha was helped to dress, 
while Nikolai Ivanovitch kept pacing up and down the 
hall saying, “It’s a first night, you must remember, we 
mustn’t be late!” Of course, they arrived at the theatre 
late. 

Sitting in a box beside her sister, Dasha watched a 

[61] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


man with a false beard and unnaturally wide-open eyes, 
who stood by a flat tree, talking to a girl in bright pink. 

“Sophia Ivanovna, I love you, I love you!” And he 
held her hand. Though the play was not at all sad, 
Dasha wanted to cry. She was sorry for the girl in 
bright pink and annoyed that the plot did not work out 
to her liking. The girl, it appeared, loved and did not 
love and when the man embraced her, she laughed like 
a mermaid and ran away to the villain, whose white 
trousers gleamed higher up the stage among the tree 
trunks. The man clutched his head and swore to de¬ 
stroy some manuscript, the work of his life, and the 
first act was finished. 

Some friends came into the box and there began the 
usual hastily started conversation. 

Little Sheinberg with his bald head and clean-shaven, 
wrinkled face which seemed to jump out of his stiff 
collar said that the play was interesting. 

“The sex problem again, but cleverly presented. Man 
must, after all, make an end to this cursed question. 

To which Burov, a tall man, a Liberal and prominent 
examining magistrate, whose wife had run away the 
Christmas before with the owner of some racing stables, 
replied: 

“Who must? As far as I am concerned, the ques¬ 
tion is settled. A woman deceives by the very fact of 
her existence, a man deceives by the help of art. The 
sex question is an abomination and art is merely one of 
the aspects of capital crime.” 

Nikolai Ivanovitch laughed and glanced at his wife. 
Burov continued gloomily. 

“When the time comes for the bird to lay an egg, the 
male puts on a brightly coloured tail. That’s a lie, 
because naturally his tail is grey, not bright. When a 

[62] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


flower blooms on the tree that is also a lie, a delusion, 
because the essence is in the ugly root beneath the 
ground. A man lies most of all. Flowers do not bloom 
on him and he has no tail, so he takes refuge in his 
tongue and invents love and all the things connected with 
it—a twofold and horrible lie. It’s a thing enigmatic 
for young ladies only of tender age,” he looked askance 
at Dasha, “but in our dull times, unfortunately, the 
most serious-minded people are amused by it. Yes, 
Russia is suffering from indigestion.” 

With a grimace he bent over a box of chocolates, and 
rummaging about in it with his fingers, picked out one 
filled with rum, put it in his mouth, then looked through 
his opera glasses that were hanging on a strap across his 
shoulder. 

The conversation turned on political stagnation and 
reaction. Kulchok, working his eyebrows, related the 
latest court scandal in an excited whisper. 

“It’s like a nightmare!” Sheinberg said hastily. Nik¬ 
olai Ivanovitch slapped himself on the knee. 

“It’s a revolution we want, a revolution immediately; 
otherwise we’ll simply perish. I have information”—he 
lowered his voice—“that the factories are in a very dis¬ 
turbed state.” 

In his excitement the whole of Sheinberg’s ten fingers 
flew into the air. 1 ^ 

“But when, when? One can’t wait indefinitely.” 

“We’ll live to see it, Yakov Alexandrovitch, you wait,” 
Nikolai Ivanovitch said cheerfully, “and Your Excel¬ 
lency shall have the portfolio of the Minister of Justice.” 

Dasha was tired of listening to these problems of 
revolutions and portfolios. With an elbow resting on 
the velvet ledge of the box and an arm round Katia’s 
waist she looked down into the body of the house, now 

[ 63 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


and again smiling to an acquaintance. Dasha saw and 
knew that she and her sister were admired and the 
glances distinguished in the crowd—tender on the part 
of the men and spiteful on the part of the women— 
the fragments of sentences and the smiles, excited her 
like the spring air. Her tearful mood had passed. One 
of her cheeks, near the ear, was tickled by Katia’s 
hair. 

“I do love you, Katia!” Dasha said in a whisper. 

“And I you.” 

“Are you pleased that I live with you?” 

“Very.” 

Dasha tried to think of something else pleasant to 
say to Katia, when suddenly she caught sight of Telie- 
gin. He was in a black coat, with his hat and pro¬ 
gramme in his hand and had for long been standing un¬ 
observed, staring at the Smokovnikovs’ box. His strong, 
sunburnt face stood out from amidst the pale and thin 
faces about him. His hair was lighter than Dasha had 
imagined; it was like corn. 

When his eye met Dasha’s he bowed, then turned 
away, and in doing so dropped his stick. Bending down 
to pick it up, he bumped against a stout lady sitting in 
the stalls; he apologized and again looked askance at the 
box, but seeing that Dasha was laughing, he blushed and 
stepped back, treading on the toes of the publisher of 
an aesthetic journal entitled “The Chorus of Muses,” 
and with a wave of his hand, he walked towards the 
exit. Dasha turned to her sister. 

“Katia, that’s Teliegin.” 

“I know. Isn’t he a dear?” 

“He’s such a dear that I feel I could kiss him. And 
you don’t know how clever he is, Katia!” 

“There now, Dasha. ...” 

[ 64 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


“What?” 

But her sister was silent. Dasha understood and also 
ceased. Again her heart was oppressed. There, within 
her shell, all was not well; she had forgotten for a mo¬ 
ment, but looking within again, it was dark, disturbing 
and stifling. 

When the lights went out and the curtains parted, it 
seemed to Dasha that she had been banished from home 
and had nowhere to take refuge from herself. She 
sighed and turned her attention to the stage. 

The man with the false beard still went on threatening 
to burn his manuscript, while the girl, who was sitting 
by the piano, kept on teasing him. It was evident that 
the best thing to do was to get the girl married as soon 
as possible rather than drag out another three acts. 
All this mental aberration was merely stupid. 

Dasha looked up at the painted ceiling of the theatre 
and there, among clouds, a beautiful nude woman was 
flying with a clear joyous smile on her lips. “Heavens, 
isn’t she like me!” Dasha thought. Then instantly she 
regarded herself from a detached point of view. There 
was a creature in a box, eating chocolates, lying, mud¬ 
dling, waiting for something extraordinary to happen, but 
nothing happened. “And there is no life for me until I go 
to him, until I hear his voice, until I feel the whole of him. 
The rest is a lie. One must simply be honest.” 

From that evening Dasha stopped asking herself 
whether she loved Bezsonov or was attracted to him by 
some wicked, unwholesome curiosity. She now knew 
that she would go to him and feared the hour. Once 
she had almost decided to go to her father in Samara, 
but reflected that a distance of twelve hundred miles 
would not save her from temptation and put the idea 
aside. 


[ 65 ] 


r 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


Her healthy maidenliness was outraged, but what 
could you do with “the other person” when everything 
in the world helped her? Besides, it was unbearably 
humiliating to suffer and think so long about this Bez- 
sonov, who would have none of her, and lived for his 
own pleasure somewhere near the Kamennoostrovsky 
Prospect, writing verses about an actress with lace petti¬ 
coats. And Dasha was every inch of her immersed in 
him, absorbed by him. 

Dasha felt an aversion for herself. She purposely 
dressed her hair plainly, in a knot on the nape of the 
neck, put on an old school dress, which she had brought 
from Samara, and in despair learnt Roman law by 
heart, refused to go out visiting and renounced all 
amusements. It was not easy to be honest. Dasha was 
simply afraid. 

Early in April, in the cool of the evening, when the 
sunset had died down and 'the faded green sky 'was 
illumined by a phosphorescent light that cast no shadows, 
Dasha was returning home from the islands on foot. 

She had told them at home that she was going to a 
lecture, but instead she had taken a tram to the Elagina 
Bridge and wandered the whole evening along the bare 
avenues, across little bridges, gazing now at the water, 
now at the purple lines in the orange sunset, at the faces 
of the passers-by, at the carriage lights floating over the 
mossy tree trunks. She was not thinking of anything 
and did not hurry. 

Her soul was calm and the whole of her being was 
filled with the spring, salt sea air. Her feet ached, but 
she did not want to return home to her room, which 
was filled with so many stifling thoughts. 

Along the broad Kamennoostrovsky Prospect car¬ 
riages rolled quickly by and long motor-cars, while with 

[ 66 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


jests and laughter groups of pedestrians passed. Dasha 
turned down a back street. 

Here it was still and deserted. There was the green 
sky above the roofs. Out of every house almost, from 
behind the curtained windows, strains of music could 
be heard. Here some one was practising a sonata, there 
a familiar waltz, there again, from a dark window of 
an attic with the red sunset reflected in it, the clear 
sounds of four voices mingled together. It seemed as 
though in the stillness of the blue evening the very 
air sang. 

And in Dasha too, affected as she was by the sounds, 
everything seemed to sing and to despair. Her body 
seemed light and pure, without the least stain. 

Dasha turned a corner, read the number of the house 
on the wall, smiled, and going up to the front door 
where, above a lion’s head of brass, there was a visiting 
card with “A. Bezsonov” written on it, she loudly rang 
the bell. 


[671 


yn 


Some one knocked on the iron gate. On a stone seat 
within the shadow of the gateway a sheepskin coat 
was seen to move, a hand was held up with a bunch of 
rattling keys, some one snorted. The sheepskin coat 
moved, the lock creaked and the heavy gate opened. 

Two men came out into the street, their chins muffled 
in the collars of their coats. They were Bezsonov and 
Akundin. From out the sheepskin coat the blear-eyed 
face of the night watchman peered and asked for a tip, 
Bezsonov thrust a twenty-kopeck piece into the end of 
his sleeve and turned to the right of the deserted street. 
Akundin followed somewhat behind, then caught him up 
and took his arm. 

“Well, Alexis Alexeyevitch, what do you think of 
our prophet, Elijah ?” Bezsonov immediately stopped. 

“Now, look here, I think it madness! In a stuffy 
little room up a backyard and up a back stairs amidst 
his books and smoke to think the way he does! . . . 
And did you notice his face ? It seemed bloodless. Only 
his lips were curiously red, as though he sucks them 
with words. I wonder what will happen now, if all he 
says comes to pass?” 

“There would be much fun in the world, Alexis Alex- 
eyevitch.” 

“It's madness! To expect to set the world on fire 
from that old sofa of his, amidst the tobacco smoke. 
It is no use your talking to me. . . . Here it is raining, 

[ 68 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


and it will go on raining to the end of time. You can’t 
move mountains.” 

They were standing by a street-lamp. Bezsonov 
watched the greenish patches of light disappearing in 
the gloomy drizzle. 

The few passers-by, reflected in the dark asphalt, were 
hurrying to their homes, their hands in their pockets, 
their noses in their collars. Akundin, in a large grey hat, 
looked Bezsonov up and down and smiled, stroking his 
beard. 

“We’ll sound such a blast on our trumpets of Jericho 
that not only the walls, but everything will crumble, 
Alexis Alexeyevitch. Our stunts are devilishly good. 
We’ve got the formula. A good deal depends on the 
formula. ‘Open Sesame.’ And ours is such a tricky 
formula that whatever you may apply it to will rot and 
fall to pieces. And you talk of not being able to move 
mountains. For the prosperity, let us say, of the Alaun- 
sky hills, we must go and fight the Germans and burn 
their towns. Hurrah, boys, for the Faith, the Tsar and 
the Fatherland! But try and apply our formula to that. 
Comrades, Russians, Germans and so on, you are naked 
and poor, you, who are the lowest of the low, enough 
of your blood has been drunk by your oppressors! 
Come, let us build universal justice. We do not ask less 
of you. It is you only who are human beings, the rest 
are parasites. What does it mean? What parasites? 
What is universal justice? Don’t you see, Alexis Alexe¬ 
yevitch, the kind of gesture that is necessary—the same 
kind with which Jesus Christ from the mount testified 
to the earthly kingdom. It’s essential to go on repeating. 
You must explain by examples what universal justice 
is, so that it can be comprehended by the Kashirsky 
district, by the village of Brukhin, by the peasant Likse 

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Ivanov Sedmoi, who from the age of twelve has been 
working at some brickyard for fifty-five kopecks a day, 
providing his own food. Example: Do you see that 
stone house over there? We do. The brick manufac¬ 
turer is sitting inside it, with a watch-chain across his 
stomach, do you see? We do. He’s got a cupboard full 
of money and there’s a severe-looking policeman walk¬ 
ing up and down by his windows, do you see him? We 
do. By universal justice it is all yours, comrades. Do 
you understand? And you, Alexis Alexeyevitch, accuse 
us of being theorists. We are like the early Christians. 
They prostrated themselves before the poor and we 
before the humble and wronged before the torn and ta- 
tered who scarcely look human; we bow down low be¬ 
fore them on behalf of the five continents. The early 
Christians had a formula and we have a formula; they 
went on crusades and we go on crusades. . . .” 

Akundin laughed; he tried to make out Bezsonov’s 
face, which was over-shadowed by his hat. Then, look¬ 
ing at his watch, he added hastily: 

‘‘You’ll kick against it, but you’ll come to us, Alexis 
Alexeyevitch. We want men like you. . . . The time 
is near; we are living through the last days. ...” He 
laughed to still his excitement and, with a jerk, firmly 
pressed Bezsonov’s hand and disappeared round the 
corner. For some time the assured sound of his heels 
along the pavement could still be heard. Bezsonov hailed 
a cab. Somewhere in the wet gloom some one smacked 
his lips and a vehicle rattled up. A woman stopped by 
the lamp-post and also began to watch the disappearing 
lights. Then she spoke, hardly moving her tongue. 

“I will never forgive.” 

Bezsonov started and looked at her. Her face, 
wrinkled and drunken, was laughing all over. An izvoz- 

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chik drove up—a tall peasant with a small horse. “Wo!” 
he said in a thin voice. Getting into the wet cab Bez- 
sonov remembered that he had an appointment with a 
woman. It would probably be dull and commonplace. 
So much the better. He gave the izvozchik the address 
and putting up his collar, he swam past the hazy out¬ 
lines of the houses, the diffusing lights from the win¬ 
dows, the little clouds of yellow fog around each street- 
lamp. 

As he drew up at the restaurant the izvozchik said in 
a broken voice, used only for the gentry: 

“You’re the fourth I’ve brought here today. Is the 
food so good? One of them was in a mighty hurry. 
‘I’ll give you a rouble,’ he said, ‘if you’ll whip up.’ And 
my horse is not a good one.” 

Bezsonov, without noticing how much, thrust a hand¬ 
ful of change into his hand and ran up the broad 
staircase of the restaurant. The porter, when taking off 
his coat, said: 

“Alexis Alexeyevitch, some one is waiting for you.” 

“Who is it?” 

“A lady whom we don’t know.” 

Bezsonov, with his head raised high and staring be¬ 
fore him with glassy eyes, walked across the low hall, 
which was packed with people, to his own little table. 
The maitre d’hotel, Loskutkin, a gentle old man, leant 
over the tablecloth and observed that there was a good 
leg of mutton today, but Bezsonov said: 

“I don’t want anything to eat. Give me some white 
wine. The kind I like.” 

He sat straight and severe, his hands on the table¬ 
cloth. At that hour and in that place there descended 
on him his habitual condition of gloomy inspiration. 
All the impressions of the day seemed to link them- 

[711 


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selves into one harmonious, comprehensive form and, 
into the very depths of him, moved as he was by the 
wail of the Rumanian fiddler, the scent of the women’s 
perfumes, the hot atmosphere of the crowded hall, there 
entered that spirit emanating from outward forms—the 
spirit of inspiration. With some blind inner sense he 
felt himself penetrate to the mysterious meaning of 
things and words—a laughing face in tears by the lamp- 
post, the music, the sensuous ecstasy of this dark night, 
the fantastic wanderings of the prophet Elijah (Uri 
Davidovitch Aliseyev, the publicist and sociologist, to 
whom Akundin had taken him that day) and all the 
strange comparisons and examples and laughter at the 
street corner by the lamp-post. 

Bezsonov raised his glass and drank the wine without 
opening his lips. His heart beat evenly. There was an 
unutterable sense of pleasure in feeling the whole of 
himself penetrated by sounds and voices. 

At the table opposite, beneath the mirror, there were 
supping together Sapojkov, Antoshka Arnoldov, a gaunt 
individual with tragic eyes, and Elisaveta Kievna. Yes¬ 
terday she had written Bezsonov a long letter appoint¬ 
ing a meeting with him here and now she was sitting 
flushed and excited. She wore a dress of some striped 
material of black and yellow and the same kind of band 
in her hair. When Bezsonov came in, she felt suffo¬ 
cated. Sapojkov said: 

“I bet you are afraid.” 

“Be careful,” Arnoldov whispered with a broad smile, 
exposing his rotten and golden teeth, “he has left his 
actress; he has no woman now and is as dangerous as 
a tiger.” 

Elisaveta Kievna laughed, shaking the striped ribbon 
in her hair and walked over between the tables to Bez- 

[72] 


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sonov. Every one looked at her and chairs were moved 
to make way for her. 

Lately Elisaveta Kievna’s life had been very dull. 
Day followed day with nothing to do, with no hope 
in the future—she was in despair. Teliegin plainly did 
not love her. He treated her kindly, but avoided seeing 
her alone. In desperation she knew that it was he that 
she wanted. When she heard his voice in the corridor, 
Elisaveta Kievna raised her eyes from her book and 
fixed them on the door. He walked along the corridor 
on tiptoe as usual. She waited, the beating of her heart 
ceasing, the door swimming before her eyes, but again 
he had gone past. If only he had knocked and asked 
for some matches. Besides, it was all so senselessly 
humiliating. 

A few days ago, to spite Jirov, who with cat-like 
caution abused everything on earth, she bought Bez- 
sonov’s book, the pages of which she cut with some 
curling tongs. She read it through several times, upset 
some coffee over it, crumpled the pages in bed and at 
dinner announced that Bezsonov was a genius. . . . Tel- 
iegin’s lodgers were shocked. Sapojkov said that Bez¬ 
sonov was a fungus growing on the decomposing body 
of the bourgeoisie. The veins on Jirov’s forehead stood 
out. He said: 

“It seems to me that you don’t sufficiently understand 
the kind of poetry it is. It is weak and without back¬ 
bone.” 

The artist, Valet, flung down his fork. Only Teliegin 
remained unconcerned. Then she experienced what she 
called “a moment of self-provocation.” She laughed and 
went into her room, wrote Bezsonov an enthusiastic, 
ridiculous letter, in which she asked to see him, re¬ 
turned to the dining-room and silently threw the letter 

ITS] 


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on the table. The lodgers read the letter aloud and dis¬ 
cussed it for a long time. Teliegin said: 

“It’s very boldly written.” 

Then Elisaveta Kievna sent the cook to post it and 
felt that she was making headlong for the abyss. 

As she now approached Bezsonov, Elisaveta Kievna 
said resolutely, “I wrote to you. You have come. Thank 
you.” 

And she immediately sat down opposite him, side¬ 
ways; she crossed her legs, rested her elbow on the 
table and began to stare at him with her pencilled eyes. 
He was silent. Loskutkin put down a second glass 
and poured out some wine for Elisaveta Kievna. She 
said: 

“You will, no doubt, ask why I wanted to see you.” 

“I will not ask. Have some wine.” 

“You are right. I have nothing to tell you. You 
live, Bezsonov, and I do not. If I had the money I 
would race over Europe in a motor-car until I had 
fallen down an abyss. To put it shortly, I am bored.” 

“What do you do?” 

“I was asked to join the party to carry out acts of 
terrorism, but I hate discipline. I’m too squeamish to 
become a courtesan, and as for some useful occupation, 
I would sooner hang myself. What can one do just 
now when everything is decaying and rotting? I do 
nothing. Are you horrified? Disgusted? I ask you, 
what shall I do?” 

“People like you will have to wait a bit,” he replied, 
holding his glass up to the light. “The time is coming 
soon, very soon, when thousands of fossilized chimeras 
like you will flock to get their prey. You have the eyes 
of a chimera.” And he slowly sucked the wine through 
his teeth. 

i » 

[74] 


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Elisaveta Kievna did not quite understand what he 
meant, but she flushed with pleasure. Feeling a ready 
listener in her, Bezsonov’s “style” changed automatically. 
He resolved to indulge in the pleasure of' casting a 
charm over this woman, so pacified by his attention, of 
enveloping her in the obscure fog of fantasy. He spoke 
of the night descending on Russia that would bring ful¬ 
fillment and a terrible reckoning. He could see this by 
mysterious and sinister signs. On the hoardings and 
on the walls of the houses, in the form of trade adver¬ 
tisements, the image of the devil had begun to appear. 
Yesterday, for instance, the firm “Cosmos” had posted 
up a huge poster representing an endless staircase, down 
which, on a motor tire, flew a laughing devil, flaming 
red, like blood. And on a hoarding in Denejni Street 
he had seen a poster showing a cloud from which a 
hand pointed down to the terrible inscription “In the 
near future.” 

“Do you realize what it means? There will soon be 
great scope for you, Elisaveta Kievna.” 

While he spoke he filled the glasses. Elisaveta Kiev¬ 
na looked at his cold eyes, his feminine mouth, at his 
raised thin eyebrows, at the slight trembling of his 
fingers as he held the glass, at the way he drank, eagerly 
and slowly. Her head went pleasantly round. From 
where he sat Sapojkov began to make signs to her. 
Suddenly Bezsonov stopped, turned round and asked 
with a frown: 

“Who are these people?” 

“Friends of mine.” 

“I don’t like their making signs.” 

Then Elisaveta Kievna said without thinking: 

“Shall we go somewhere else?” 

Bezsonov looked at her intently. Her eyes squinted 

[75] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


slightly, her lips smiled feebly, small beads of perspi¬ 
ration appeared on her temples. He was suddenly seized 
with a desire to possess this strong, short-sighted girl. He 
took her large, hot hand resting on the table and said: 

“You must either leave me immediately, or be silent. 
Let us go. It must be. . . 

Elisaveta Kievna merely gave a little gasp and her 
cheeks turned pale. She did not know how she got 
up from her chair, nor how she took Bezsonov’s arm, 
nor how her coat was put on in the cloakroom. And 
when they got into the cab even the wind did not cool 
her burning skin. The cab rattled over the stones. 
Bezsonov leant with both hands on his walking-stick, 
rested his chin on them and said: 

“You said just now that I live. I have lived. I am 
thirty-eight, but my life is finished. I am no longer 
deceived by love. What can be sadder than to realize 
suddenly that the noble steed is no more than a miser¬ 
able hobby-horse? And there is a long time yet to drag 
out this life, like a corpse. . . 

He turned; his upper lip curled into a smile. 

“It seems that like you I must wait for the blast of 
the trumpets of Jericho. How nice it would be if the 
sound were to break out suddenly over this graveyard 
and the sky were to turn a flaming red. . . 

They drove up to a hotel outside the town. A sleepy 
waiter led them down a long corridor to the only vacant 
room. It was a low room with a red wall-paper, tom 
and dirty. Against the wall, beneath a large, jaded can¬ 
opy, stood a bed, at the foot of which was an iron 
washstand. There was a smell of mustiness and stale 
tobacco smoke. A dusty little lamp burned dimly be¬ 
neath the ceiling. Standing by the door, Elisaveta Kiev¬ 
na said: 

[76] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


“Why have you brought me here?” 

“No, no, it will be very nice here,’ , Bezsonov said 
hastily. 

“I am going away.” 

He took off her coat and hat and put them on a 
broken armchair. The waiter brought a bottle of 
champagne, some small apples and a bunch of grapes 
covered with cork saw-dust, then he looked at the wash- 
stand and withdrew gloomily. 

Elisaveta Kievna drew back the blind from the win¬ 
dow. On a bare waste a gas lamp was burning and 
huge water barrels passed with men on the box, bent 
beneath the mats round their shoulders. She smiled, 
walked over to the looking-glass and began to tidy her 
hair with new and unfamiliar movements. “When I 
come to myself tomorrow, I’ll go mad,” she thought 
calmly as she arranged the striped band. Bezsonov asked: 

“Would you like some wine?” 

“I would.” 

She sat down on the sofa, he sat down on the floor 
at her feet and said hesitatingly: 

“You have curious eyes—wild and gentle. Russian 
eyes. Do you love me?” 

At this she was again confused, but thought immedi¬ 
ately, “No, this is madness.” She took a glassful of 
wine from his hand and drank it, and instantly her head 
began to go round slowly, as though she had capsized. 

“I am afraid of you, and I shall hate you probably,” 
Elisaveta Kievna said, wondering with a smile at the 
distant sound of her own and yet not her own words. 
“Don't dare to look at me like that! Do you hear ?” 

“You are a strange girl.” 

“Look here, Bezsonov, you are a very dangerous man. 
Very terrible. I come from a family of old-believers 

[77] 


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and I believe in the devil. . . . Oh, heavens, don’t look 
at me like that! And you don’t even believe in yourself. 
I know what you want of me. ... I am afraid of 
you, on my honour. . . .” 

She laughed aloud so that the whole of her body shook 
with the laughter, spilling the wine from the glass in 
her hand. Bezsonov put his face on her lap. 

“Love me. ... I implore you, love me,” he said in 
a desperate voice, as though at that moment the whole 
of his salvation was centred in her. “It is hard for me, 
if you knew. ... I am afraid. ... I am afraid alone. 
. . . Pity me. . . . Love me, love me. ...” 

Elisaveta put her hand on his head and shut her eyes. 

He told her that every night a fear of death came 
over him. He must feel some one near to him, a living 
being beside him, who would pity him, who would give 
herself to him. . . . “This is painful, torture. ... I 
am quite numb. My heart has stopped. Kindle me. I 
want so little. Pity me, I am perishing. . . . Don’t 
leave me alone. Dear girl. ...” 

Elisaveta Kievna sat silent in her fear and excite¬ 
ment, while Bezsonov kept showering more lingering 
kisses on the palms of her hands. He kissed her large, 
sturdy feet. She closed her eyes more tightly; it seemed 
that her heart had stopped beating from very shame. 

And suddenly a fire seemed to kindle her and ran over 
her body in a feeling of terror and joy. Bezsonov now 
appeared to her like a dear child, unhappy and innocent. 
She raised his head and kissed him firmly and eagerly 
on the lips. Afterwards, without any shame, she un¬ 
dressed quickly and got into bed. 

When Bezsonov had fallen asleep with his head on 
her bare shoulder she gazed for long with her short¬ 
sighted eyes at his pale, yellowish face with the tiny 

[78] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


wrinkles on the temples, above the eyelids and by the 
mouth—a face unloved, but now forever dear to her. 

Such a feeling of pain came over her as she watched 
him that she wept. She imagined Bezsonov waking and 
trying to get away from her when he saw her there, fat 
and ugly with swollen eyes. No one could love her, 
so it seemed to her, and all would now regard her as an 
abandoned, silly and commonplace woman. She loved 
one man and had given herself to another, and her life 
would henceforth be full of trouble and shame and in¬ 
sults. Elisaveta Kievna wept silently, wiping her eyes 
with a corner of the sheet. And thus, in tears, she 
gradually fell asleep. 

Bezsonov took a deep draught of air through his nose, 
turned over on his back and opened his eyes. An un¬ 
utterable feeling of misery pervaded his whole body. It 
was nauseating to think that he must begin a new day. 
He stared for a long time at the metal knob of the bed, 
then with an effort, looked to the left. Beside him, also 
on her back, lay a woman, her face covered with her 
bare elbow. 

“I wonder who she is?” He tried hard to stir his 
clouded brain, but remembered nothing. He carefully 
pulled out his cigarette-case from beneath the pillow 
and lighted a cigarette. “Damn! Eve forgotten! 
Deuced awkward!” 

“Are you awake?” he asked in a wheedling voice. 
“Good morning.” She was silent and did not remove 
her elbow. “Yesterday we were strangers to one an¬ 
other and today we are united by the mysterious bonds of 
the night.” He frowned. It all sounded so banal. And 
besides he did not know what she would do now. Would 
she repent, weep or give vent to a burst of affection? 
He cautiously touched her elbow. She moved away. 

[79] 


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It seemed that her name was Valentine. He said sadly: 

“Are you angry with me, Valentine?” 

At this she sat up on the pillows and holding her 
chemise which was slipping off her shoulders, she stared 
at him with her short-sighted eyes. Her eyelids were 
swollen, her full lips were twisted into a smile. He in¬ 
stantly recalled everything and felt a brotherly tender¬ 
ness for her. 

“My name is Elisaveta Kievna, not Valentine,” she 
said. “I hate you! Will you get out of bed?” 

Bezsonov instantly got out from under the bed¬ 
clothes and somehow or other put on his clothes behind 
the canopy, by the dirty washstand. He pulled up the 
blind and switched off the electric light. 

“There are moments which one does not forget,” he 
said. 

Elisaveta watched him with her dark eyes. When he 
ha'd seated himself on the sofa with a cigarette, she said: 

“I will poison myself when I get home.” 

“I fail to understand your mood, Elisaveta Kievna.” 

“You are not asked to understand. Get out of the 
room, I want to dress.” 

Bezsonov went out into the corridor, which was 
draughty and full of charcoal fumes. He had to wait 
a long time. He sat on a window-sill and smoked, then 
he walked to the end of the corridor, whence, from the 
small kitchen, the restrained voices of the waiter and 
two housemaids were heard. They were drinking tea 
and the waiter was saying: 

“Enough she’s told us about her village. Russia, if 
you please! Much you understand. You should go 
around our rooms at night—there’s Russia for you! 
Blackguards and scoundrels all!” 

“Mind what you say, Kusma Ivanovitch.” 

[80] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


“Fve served these rooms for eighteen years and know 
what I'm talking about.” 

Bezsonov turned back. The door of his room was 
open, the room deserted. His hat was on the floor. 

“So much the better,” he thought, yawning agreeably. 
He stretched himself, straightening his bones. 

Thus the new day began. It differed from yesterday 
only in that by ten o’clock a strong wind broke the rain 
clouds and drove them to the north, where they were 
heaped in white mounds. The wet town was bathed in 
fresh rays of sunlight, in which, shrivelling and toasting 
themselves and falling unconscious, were gelatinous mon¬ 
sters invisible to the eye—the germs of colds and coughs, 
of bad diseases, of melancholy, consumption and even 
the half mystic microbes of black neurasthenia-—swarm¬ 
ing against the curtains in the half darkened rooms and 
in cellars. In the streets a warm wind blew. In the 
houses windows were being cleaned and opened. Yard- 
porters, in their coloured shirts, were cleaning the pave¬ 
ments. On the Nevsky abandoned girls with greenish 
faces were offering passers-by bunches of snow-drops, 
which smelt of sweet eau-de-Cologne. In the shops all 
winter wares were being speedily put away, and like 
first spring flowers, in the showcases, spring hats ap¬ 
peared and light materials and books of frivolous con¬ 
tents and gay neckties. 

The three o’clock papers all had large headlines, “Hail 
to the Russian Spring!” And several of the verses pub¬ 
lished were pointed in their double meaning. The censor 
began to sniff. 

And then, accompanied by the shouts and hootings of 
street boys, the futurists of the “Central Station” group 
marched through the town. There were three of them— 
Jirov, the artist, Valet, and a man whom no one knew, 

[81] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


Arkadi Semisvetov by name, a huge fellow with a face 
like a horse and large veins on his hands. 

They were all dressed in short loose blouses of orange 
velvet with black zigzags, in top hats and monocles on 
ribbons. Each had a fish, an arrow and a letter “P” 
painted on his cheek. About five o’clock they were de¬ 
tained by the inspector of the foundry district and taken 
in a cab to the police-station for identification. 

The whole town was in the streets. On the Morsky, 
the embankment and the Kamennoostrovsky brilliant car¬ 
riages and streams of people moved along. To a great 
many it seemed that the day must bring something joy¬ 
ous and unexpected. Some manifesto would be signed 
in the Winter Palace, or the council of ministers would 
be blown up by a bomb, or something or other would 
“begin.” 

But the blue twilight descended on the town; the lamps 
were lighted; like precious stones they shone along the 
canals and streets and were reflected in shimmering 
points on the dark water, and from the bridges of the 
Neva, at the back of the chimneys of the ship-building 
yards, a huge sunset glowed, covered by a hazy mist. 
Nothing had happened. There was a flash on the Peter- 
Paul fortress, a gun boomed and the day was at an end. 

Bezsonov worked long and well that day. Refreshed 
by a sleep after luncheon, he read Goethe and, as usual, 
reading roused and excited him. 

He paced the room by his bookcases, thinking, some¬ 
times aloud. From time to time he sat down at his desk 
and jotted down a few words and sentences. To act as 
a further stimulant he asked for some black coffee, and 
his old nurse, who lived in his small bachelor 1 flat, 
brought in on a tray a porcelain coffee-pot with steam¬ 
ing Mocha coffee. 

[82] 




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Bezsonov wrote of the black night that was descend¬ 
ing on Russia; the curtains of tragedy were parting; the 
God-fearing people, gloriously, like the Cossack in “The 
Frightful Revenge,” would denounce God and put on 
the terrible mask. The gulf was open. There was no 
salvation. We must take sin upon ourselves. 

He closed his eyes and pictured deserted fields, crossed 
on sepulchral mounds, and shattered roofs scattered by 
the wind, and in the distance, beyond the hills, the glow 
of burning towns. Clutching his head with both hands 
it seemed to him that it was thus specially that he loved 
this land, his knowledge of which had come only from 
books and pictures. Deep wrinkles appeared on his fore¬ 
head, a terrible foreboding was in his heart. With a 
smoking cigarette between his fingers, he filled four 
sheets of thin rustling paper with blank verse in a large 
firm hand. 

When it grew dark Bezsonov did not light the lamp. 
He lay down on the couch, still excited, with burning 
head and moist hands. With this his working day was 

over. 

Gradually his heart began to beat more calmly and 
evenly. Now he must decide how to spend the evening 
and night. No one had rung him up on the telephone, 
no one had come to see him. He must manage the 
demon of melancholy by himself. Upstairs, where an 
English family lived, some one was playing the piano, 
and at the sound of the music, vague and impossible 
desires arose. 

Suddenly the stillness of the house was broken by a 
ring at the front door. The nurse slopped along in her 
slippers. A woman’s firm voice said: 

“I want to see him.” 

Then, light, impetuous footsteps stopped by the door. 

[83] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


Bezsonov, without moving, smiled. The door opened 
silently and a tall girl in a large hat, trimmed with erect 
white daisies, came into the room, the light from the hall 
shining behind her. 

Not being able to distinguish anything in the room 
she stopped in the middle; when Bezsonov rose silently 
from his couch she would have stepped back, but ob¬ 
stinately shook her head and said in the same high, com¬ 
manding voice: 

“I’ve come to see you about something important.” 

Bezsonov walked over to the table and touched the 
switch. Among the books and manuscripts a blue lamp¬ 
shade lighted up, filling the whole room with a soft 
light. 

“What can I do for you?” Alexis Alexeyevitch asked, 
pointing to a chair, while he himself sank calmly into his 
desk chair, on the arms of which he rested his weary 
hands. His face was transparently pale, with blue 
patches under the eyes. Slowly he raised his eyes to 
his visitor’s face and started, his fingers trembling. 

“Daria Dmitrievna!” he said softly. “I did not rec¬ 
ognize you at first.” 

Dasha sat down as resolutely as she had come into the 
room; she rested her gloved hands on her lap and 
frowned angrily. 

“Daria Dmitrievna, I am happy that you have come 
to see me. It is a great, a very great honour.” 

Without listening to him, Dasha said: 

“Please don’t imagine that I am an admirer of yours. 
I like some of your poems, others I don’t; I don’t under¬ 
stand them and don’t like them. I haven’t come to 
talk about poetry. . . .I’ve come because you have 
worn me out. ...” 

She dropped her head and Bezsonov saw the colour 

[84] 


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rise on her neck and wrist, which showed between her 
glove and black dress. He sat silent without moving. 

“I don’t suppose you take the least interest in me. 
And I would like to be equally as indifferent to you, 
but you see, I have to go through some very unpleasant 
moments. . . .” 

She quickly raised her head and with her clear, grave 
eyes looked into his. Bezsonov slowly lowered his eye¬ 
lids. 

“I cannot conquer myself, do you understand? You 
have entered into me like a disease. I always catch 
myself thinking about you. It is more than I can bear. 
I thought it better to tell you frankly than to be so 
stifled. Today I resolved to come. You see, I have 
made you a declaration of love. ...” 

Her lips trembled. She quickly turned away and be¬ 
gan to stare at the wall, where, illuminated from below, 
smiling with compressed lips and eyelids closed, was 
the mask of Peter I., beloved by the poets of the day. 
In the English parson’s family upstairs four voices were 
singing: 

“We will die. No, we will fly. In the crystal sky. 
To eternal, eternal, eternal joy.” 

“If you will attempt to assure me that you have any 
kind of feeling for me, I will go away at once,” Dasha 
said with warmth. “You cannot so much as respect me, 
that is quite clear. Women do not behave like this. 
But I don’t want anything and do not ask anything of 
you. I merely wanted to tell you that I loved you hor¬ 
ribly. . . . The feeling has made me go to pieces. . . . 
I have no pride, even. ...” 

And she thought: “Now I must get up, bow proudly 
and go away.” But she continued to sit there, staring 
at the smiling mask. Such a weariness came over her 

[85] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


that she could not raise her hands and she felt conscious 
of the weight of her warm body. “Answer, answer 
me,” she thought, as in a dream. Bezsonov covered his 
face with his hands and began to speak softly, as they 
speak in church, in a somewhat stifled voice: 

“With all my heart I can only thank you for your 
feeling. Such moments, such fragrance as you have 
brought me one never forgets. ...” 

“You are not asked to remember,” Dasha murmured 
through her teeth. 

Bezsonov was silent. He rose and leant with his back 
against the bookcase. 

“Daria Dmitrievna, I can only bow down before you. 
I am not worthy to listen to you. I have, perhaps, never 
cursed myself so much as in these moments. I have 
squandered and spent myself until I am quite hollow. 
How can I respond to you? By an invitation to an 
hotel outside the town? Daria Dmitrievna, I will be 
honest with you. There is nothing in me to love. A 
few years ago I would have believed that I could still 
drink of eternal youth. I would not have let you go 
from me. I would have fastened on the cup. ...” 

Dasha felt that he was digging needles into her. His 
words were protracted torture. . . . 

“Now I can only spill the precious wine. You must 
realize what this means to me. To stretch out my hand 
and take. ...” 

“No, no!” Dasha said in a hurried whisper. 

“But it is so. . . . And you feel it. There is no 
sweeter sin than to squander and to spill. That is why 
you have come to me. Otherwise you would have 
guarded forever behind your white curtains the cup of 
honey God has given you. You have brought it to 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


He half closed his eyes slowly. Dasha, holding her 
breath, looked in horror at his face. 

“Daria Dmitrievna, may I be frank with you? You 
are so like your sister that at first-” 

“What?” Dasha cried. “What did you say?” 

“I feared that under the circumstances, it would be 
too hard to conquer myself.” 

Dasha jumped up from her chair and stood before 
him. Bezsonov did not understand the reason of her 
excitement. He felt that he was losing his head. His 
nostrils smelt fragrant perfumes and that inexplicable, 
overwhelming scent of a woman’s skin. . . . 

“This is madness ... I know ... I cannot . . .” 
he murmured, blindly trying to take her hand. But 
Dasha tore it back and ran away. On the threshold she 
looked back with wild eyes, then disappeared. The front 
door banged. Bezsonov walked slowly to the table and 
drummed with his fingers on a crystal cigarette-box. 
He pressed his hand over his eyes. With all the grue¬ 
some force of his imagination it seemed to him that the 
White Order, making ready for a decisive battle, had 
sent this spirited, gentle, alluring girl to attract him, to 
direct and to save him. But he was hopelessly in the 
hands of the Black and beyond salvation. Slowly, like 
a poison coursing through his blood, they excited his 
unquenchable thirst and pity. 


[871 



VIII 


“Is that you, Dasha? Come in.” 

Ekaterina Dmitrievna was standing by the wardrobe 
mirror putting on her corsets. She smiled absently at 
Dasha and continued her absorbed twistings by the mir¬ 
ror, dancing about on the carpet in her tight slippers. 
On a low little table near by was a cup of hot water, 
and all about were nail-scissors, files, pencils and pow¬ 
der-puffs. This was a free evening and Ekaterina 
Dmitrievna was “cleaning her feathers,” as they called it 
at home. 

“Do you know,” she said, pulling on a stocking, “they 
no longer wear corsets with straight busks. Look at 
this one; it’s a new one, from Madame Duclet’s. The 
stomach is much freer and is even a little accentuated. 
Do you like it?” 

“I don’t,” Dasha said. She was standing by the wall, 
her hands crossed behind her. Ekaterina Dmitrievna 
raised her brows in wonder. 

“Don’t you? I’m sorry. It’s so comfortable.” 

“What is comfortable, Katia?” 

“Is it the lace you don’t like? It can easily be changed. 
It’s funny that you don’t like it.” 

And she again turned to right and left by the mirror. 
Dasha said: 

“You needn’t ask me if I like your corsets.” 

“Oh, well, Nikolai Ivanovitch doesn’t understand 
these things.” 

“I don’t see where Nikolai Ivanovitch comes in.” 

[ 88 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


“Dasha, what is the matter?” 

Ekaterina Dmitrievna stood open-mouthed in wonder. 
She only now remarked that Dasha could scarcely con¬ 
tain herself, that she spoke through clenched teeth and 
that there were red patches on her cheeks. 

“I think you might stop dancing before the mirror.” 

“But I must make myself tidy.” 

“For whom?” 

“Well, really . . .For myself, of course.” 

“You lie.” 

For long after this the sisters were silent. Ekaterina 
Dmitrievna took from the back of a chair a camel-hair 
dressing gown lined with blue silk; she put it on and 
slowly tied the girdle. Dasha watched her movements 
intently, then said: 

“Go to Nikolai Ivanovitch and tell him everything, 
honestly.” 

Ekaterina Dmitrievna continued to stand there, fid¬ 
dling with her girdle. A lump could be seen to rise in 
her throat as though she were swallowing something. 

“Dasha, have you heard anything?” she asked softly. 

“I have just come from Bezsonov’s.” Ekaterina 
Dmitrievna looked up quickly with her bedimmed eyes 
and turned deadly pale. Her shoulders twitched. “You 
need have no fear; nothing happened to me there. He 
told me in time that my charms were enhanced by my 
resemblance to you.” 

Dasha stepped from one foot to the other. 

“I have long suspected that it was with him. . . . But 
it was too disgusting to believe. You were a coward 
and you lied, and it seems that you are now resigned. 
. . . But I tell you I won’t live in this filth. ... Go 
to your husband and tell him and then disentangle your¬ 
self as best you know how. ...” 


189 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


Dasha could say no more. Her sister was standing 
before her with bowed head. Dasha had expected any¬ 
thing but this submissive bowed head. 

“Shall I go now?” Katia asked. 

“Yes. This moment ... I demand it. . . .You 
must understand yourself. ...” 

Ekaterina Dmitrievna gave a gentle sigh and walked 
towards the door. She hesitated for a moment and 
said: 

“I can’t, Dasha.” But Dasha was silent. “Very well, 
I will tell him.” 

Nikolai Ivanovitch was sitting in the drawing-room 
scratching his beard with a bone paper-knife and read¬ 
ing Akundin’s article in “The Russian Review,” which 
he had only just received. 

The subject of the article was the commemoration of 
the anniversary of Bakunin’s death. Nikolai Ivano¬ 
vitch was enjoying himself. 

“Katia, my dear, sit down. Just listen to what he 
says here. ... ‘It is not so much in his mode of thought, 
nor in his untiring devotion to the cause that the fas¬ 
cination of the man lies’—that is, Bakunin—‘as in the 
pathos of his translation of ideas into real life, which 
could be seen in every action of his—in his night-long 
discussions with Proudhon, in the gallantry with which 
he fought in the very heat of the battle, even in his ro¬ 
mantic gesture when, merely passing through the coun¬ 
try, he directed the guns of the Austrian rebels, with¬ 
out quite knowing whom and what they were fighting 
for. Bakunin’s pathos is the symbol of the fury with 
which the new classes enter the fight. The materialization 
of ideas is the problem of the coming age. Not the ab¬ 
straction from the mass of facts, which are subjected 
to the blind inertia of life, not the withdrawal into the 

[ 90 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


world of ideals, but a contrary process—the conquest of 
the physical world by the ideal world. Reality is an 
inflammable mass, ideas are the sparks. The two 
worlds are separate and hostile. They must be welded 
together in the flame of the world revolution.’ Just 
think, Katia. . . . It’s as plain as a pike-staff. Hurrah 
for the revolution 1 A splendid fellow, Akundin! We 
are certainly living in a time void of big ideas and deep 
feeling. The government is only guided by its insane 
fear of the future. The intellectuals spend their time 
eating and drinking; it is time to open the windows. 
We do nothing but talk and talk, Katia, and are up to 
our ears in the swamp. The people are rotting alive. 
The whole of Russia is steeped in syphilis and vodka. 
Russia is like a rotted mass; if you were to blow on it, 
it would go into dust. We need the self-sacrificial pyre, 
purification by fire. . . .” 

Nikolai Ivanovitch spoke in an excited velvety voice; 
his eyes grew round, the paper-knife he held cut the 
air. Ekaterina Dmitrievna was standing near by, her 
hand resting on the back of a chair. When he stopped 
speaking and began to cut the pages of the review, she 
went up to him and put her hand on his hair. 

“Kolenko, what I am going to say will cause you 
great pain. I had wanted to keep it from you, but 
things have so happened that I must speak. . . .” 

Nikolai Ivanovitch disengaged his head from her hand 
and looked at her intently. 

“I am listening, Katia.” 

“When we quarrelled, if you remember, I said, in 
spite, that you need not be so sure of me . . . And 
then I denied it. . . .” 

“I remember quite well.” He put down his book and 

[91 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


swung round in his chair. His eyes, meeting Katia’s 
quiet, calm gaze, were full of alarm. 

“Well, I lied to you ... I had been unfaithful to 
you. . . .” 

He screwed up his lips pitifully, trying to smile. His 
mouth was parched. When he could no longer be silent, 
he said in a hoarse voice: 

“You have done well to tell me . . . Thank you, 
Katia.” 

She took his hand, touched it with her lips and 
pressed it against her breast. But the hand slipped away 
and she made no attempt to keep it. Then Ekaterina 
Dmitrievna sank softly on the carpet and put her head 
on the leather arm of the chair. 

“Have you nothing else to say to me?” 

“No, Katia, you can go.” 

She rose and went out. In the dining-room doorway 
she was seized unexpectedly by Dasha, who embraced 
her and showered kisses on her hair, her neck, her 
hands. 

“Forgive me! Forgive me!” she whispered. “You 
are wonderful, amazing! I heard everything . . . Can 
you ever forgive me, can you ever forgive me, Katia?” 

Ekaterina Dmitrievna freed herself gently and went 
over to the table where she straightened a crease in the 
tablecloth. 

“I have done what you told me to do, Dasha.” 

“Katia, can you ever forgive me?” 

“You were right, Dasha. It is better as it is.” 

“I wasn’t right; I only said those horrible things to 
you out of spite! I see now that no one is fit to judge 
you. It doesn’t matter if we are all miserable, if we 
all suffer, but you are in the right! I feel that you are 
right in everything. Forgive me, Katia.” 

[ 92 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


Large tears as round as peas fell down Dasha's 
cheeks. She was standing behind Katia, a step or two 
away from her and said in a loud whisper: 

“If you won’t forgive me, I don’t want to live. Any¬ 
how, I don’t know how to live now . . . And if you 
will treat me like this--” 

Ekaterina Dmitrievna turned to her sharply. 

“Like what, Dasha? Did you expect everything to 
be as easy and affectionate as before? You must know 
... I lied because I knew that it was only by doing 
so that I could go on living with Nikolai Ivanovitch a 
little longer. And now there is an ending to everything. 
. . . Do you understand? I ceased to love Nikolai 
Ivanovitch long ago and have long been unfaithful to 
him. I don’t know whether Nikolai Ivanovitch loves me 
or not; at any rate, he is no husband to me. Do you 
understand? He may have another family somewhere 
or he may have no need of a woman, or perhaps he has 
acute neurasthenia, I don’t know. And there you are 
hiding your head under your wing so as not to see ugly 
things. I could see them all the time and I knew and 
I went on living in this filth because I was a weak 
woman. I could see that you, too, were being drawn 
into this life. I tried to protect you and forbade Bez- 
sonov the house . . . That was before he . . . How¬ 
ever, it doesn’t matter . . .Now everything is at an 
end. . . .” 

Ekaterina Dmitrievna suddenly raised her head and 
listened. In between the curtains of the doorway, stand¬ 
ing sideways, was Nikolai Ivanovitch. r He kept his 
hands behind his back. 

“Bezsonov?” he asked with a smile, shaking his head. 
He came into the dining-room. 

Ekaterina Dmitrievna did not reply. Red patches ap- 

[ 93 ] 



THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


peared on her cheeks; her eyes were dry; her lips tightly 
compressed. 

‘‘You are mistaken if you think that our conversation is 
finished, Katia.” 

He continued to smile. “Dasha, leave us alone, 
please. ,, 

“I won’t go.” And Dasha stood beside her sister. 

“But you will go if I ask you.” 

“I won’t go.” 

“In that case, I shall have to leave this house.” 

“Leave it then,” Dasha said, looking at him with 
hatred. 

Nikolai Ivanovitch turned purple, but instantly his 
former expression of light-hearted madness appeared in 
his eyes. 

“So much the better, you can stay. Now look here, 
Katia ... I stayed where you left me and, to speak the 
truth, I went through some very hard moments. ... I 
have come to the conclusion that I must kill you . . . 
I must. ...” 

At these words Dasha pressed against her sister and 
put both arms about her. Ekaterina Dmitrievna’s lips 
trembled disdainfully. 

“You are hysterical, Nikolai Ivanovitch; you must 
take some valerian.” 

“No, Katia, it is not hysteria this time. ...” 

.“Then do what you have come to do,” she cried, push¬ 
ing Dasha aside and going right up to Nikolai Ivano¬ 
vitch. “Do it! I tell you to your face, I don’t love 
you!” 

He stepped back, produced the revolver which had 
been concealed behind his back and put it on the table. 
He then put his fingers in his mouth and bit them and 
turned towards the door. 


[ 94 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


“It hurts! It hurts!” 

Then Ekaterina Dmitrievna rushed up to him, seized 
his shoulders and turned his face to hers. 

“It’s a lie! You know it’s a lie! . . . You are lying 
this moment! ...” But he shook his head and went 
out. Ekaterina Dmitrievna sat down by the table. 

“Well, Dashenka, we have had the shooting scene 
from the third act. You can see for yourself what a 
woman must come to with a weakling like that ... I 
shall leave him.” 

“Heavens! Katia!” 

“I shall go away; I can’t live like this. In five years 
;I shall be old; it will be too late then. I can’t live like 
this any longer . . . It’s horrible, horrible!” She cov¬ 
ered her face with her hands, then buried it in her arm 
on the table. Dasha sat down beside her and gently 
kissed her shoulder. Ekaterina Dmitrievna raised her 
head. 

“Don’t think that I am not sorry for him. I am al¬ 
ways sorry for him. If I were to go to him now we 

should start a long conversation which would be false 
through and through. It seems as if a demon were al¬ 
ways between us, twisting our words. To talk to him 
is like playing on a piano that is out of tune. I shall go 
away. Dasha, my dear, if only you knew how miserable 
I feel! I want something so different. All my life I 
have been aching to love. To love in such a way that 

every moment, with every thought, with the whole of 

my body, with my skin, I; should be conscious that I 
loved . . . As I am I hate myself.” 

Nevertheless, late in the evening, Ekaterina Dmitri¬ 
evna went into her husband’s study. 

They talked for a long time, quietly and sadly, each 
trying to be honest with the other, and not sparing them- 

[ 95 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


selves. Both, however, were left with the impression 
that nothing had been accomplished by the talk; they 
had failed to understand each other and had not been 
brought any closer by it. 

When left alone Nikolai Ivanovitch sat sighing at the 
table until daybreak. 

During those hours, so Katia learnt later, he had re¬ 
viewed the whole course of his life. The result was a 
long epistle to his wife which ended in this way: “Yes, 
Katia, morally we are in a blind alley. For the past 
five years I have not experienced a single deep feeling 
nor have I done anything worth while. Even my love 
for you and our marriage have gone by unnoticed, as it 
*were. An existence petty and half hysterical, perpetually 
under the narcotic of the deliberate artificialities of our 
life. There are only two issues, to put an end to myself 
or to tear the stifling shroud that is wrapped around my 
thoughts, my feelings, my consciousness ... I am not 
in a condition to do the one or the other. ...” 

The family misfortune had come about so suddenly 
and the domestic world had collapsed so easily and ir¬ 
revocably that Dasha was too overwhelmed to dream of 
worrying about herself. What was there in those girl¬ 
ish moods of hers, anyway? They reminded her of the 
terrible goat on the wall which their nurse, Lukeria, used 
to show her and Katia long ago. She would take a lighted 
candle and put her hands together and on the wall there 
would appear a goat eating cabbage-leaves and wagging 
its horns. 

Several times during the course of the day Dasha 
would go to Katia’s door and knock gently with her 
fingers, but Katia would say: 

“Dasha, dear, if possible, do leave me alone.” 

During those days Nikolai Ivanovitch had to appear 

[ 96 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


in court. He left home early, lunched and dined in a 
restaurant and returned late at night. His defence of an 
excise official’s wife, Zoya Ivanovna Ladnikova, who 
had murdered her sleeping lover in Gorokhova Street, 
a student, Shlippe by name, the son of a Petersburg 
landlord, astounded the whole court. The women pres¬ 
ent wept. The accused, Zoya Ivanovna, who had dashed 
her head against the railings, was acquitted. 

Nikolai Ivanovitch, pale and weary-eyed, was besieged 
by a crowd of women at the exit; they threw flowers 
at him, shrieked and kissed his hands. From the court 
he went home and had an explanation with Katia in 
which he showed genuine tenderness. 

Ekaterina Dmitrievna, it turned out, had her trunks 
packed. He honestly advised her to go to the south of 
France and gave her twelve thousand for expenses. As 
for himself—this also came out during the conversation 
—he had decided to entrust his practice to his assistant 
and to go away to the Crimea there to rest and take 
stock of himself. 

It was really very vague and indefinite as to whether 
they were parting for a time or forever and as to who 
had left whom. These poignant questions were kept 
carefully in the background in the general bustle of de¬ 
parture. 

Both had forgotten Dasha. Ekaterina Dmitrievna 
remembered only at the last moment, when, dressed in 
a grey travelling costume, tired and wan and sweet, she 
caught sight of Dasha sitting on a trunk in the hall. 
Dasha was swinging her legs and eating bread and mar¬ 
malade, for dinner had been overlooked that day. 

“Dasha, my dear,” Ekaterina Dmitrievna said, kissing 
her through her veil, “what will you do? Would you 
like to come with me?” 


[ 97 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


But Dasha announced her intention of staying on in 
the flat with the Great Mogul and entering for her ex¬ 
amination, after which she would go to her father’s for 
the summer. 



j 


[ 98 ] 


IX 


Dasha remained alone in the house. The large rooms 
seemed to lose their coziness and the things in them ap¬ 
peared superfluous. With the departure of host and 
hostess even the cubist portraits began to fade and lose 
their terror. The door-curtains hung in dead folds. 
The lifeless arabesques of distorted flowers and figures 
stood out in woeful monotony. Though the Great Mo¬ 
gul, ghostlike, moved about the rooms each morning 
flicking off the dust with a feather brush, some other in¬ 
visible dust seemed to settle as fast again on the house. 

Surrounded by this accumulation of utterly useless 
and superfluous objects it struck Dasha for the first 
time that her sister and brother-in-law, so to speak, nailed 
themselves to life with these things, filling up the empty 
places with them, not having the strength or the stick- 
ing-power to hold on of themselves. 

Her sister's room spoke as a book of what she 
lived by. Here in one comer stood a small wooden 
easel with an unfinished drawing on it of a girl in pro¬ 
file in a white wreath. Ekaterina Dmitrievna had seized 
on this easel in the hope of extricating herself from the 
general turmoil, but had not been able to hold out. There 
stood an antique work-table in disorder, filled with un¬ 
finished pieces of work—unripped hats, bits of coloured 
stuff—all begun and abandoned. Equally untidy was 
her wardrobe, though it showed traces of an attempt at 
orderliness, which was subsequently abandoned. And 
all over the place were flung and thrust half cut books 

[ 99 ] 


■» i > 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


on Yoga, popular lectures on \ anthroposophy, poetry, 
novels. What many fruitless endeavours to begin a vir¬ 
tuous life! On the dressing table Dasha found a silver- 
cased memorandum block on which was jotted: “24 
chemises, 8 slips, 8 lace slips. . . . Tickets for the Ved- 
rinskys for ‘Uncle Vanya/ ” And then in a round, child¬ 
ish hand, “Dasha likes apple-tart.” 

Dasha remembered that the apple-tart was never 
bought. She felt so sorry for her sister that the tears 
came. Affectionate and kindly, too gentle for this life, 
she seized on trifle after trifle to fortify herself, to 
shield herself from destruction, but there was nothing and 
no one to help her. 

Dasha rose early and sat down at her books. The 
result of her examination was good in almost everything. 
To the telephone, which kept on ringing incessantly in 
the study, she would send the Great Mogul, who invari¬ 
ably said, “The Master and the Mistress have gone 
away; the young lady cannot come to the telephone.” 

On many occasions the whole evening long Dasha 
would play the piano. Music did not excite her as be¬ 
fore ; it no longer aroused vague desires in her, nor 
made the heart tremble strangely. Sitting quietly and 
solemnly at her music-book with a candle on either side 
of it, Dasha seemed to purify herself with the majestic 
sounds that penetrated into every corner of that in¬ 
iquitous house. 

Sometimes during the music small foes would ap¬ 
pear—uninvited recollections. Dasha would drop her 
hands and frown. And the house would grow so still 
that the guttering of the candles could be heard. Then 
Dasha would sigh deeply and once more her fingers 
forcefully touched the keys and the small foes, like 
dust and leaves driven by the wind, fled from the big 

[ 100 ] 

i 

O v 
a v *• 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


room somewhere into the dark corridor, behind ward¬ 
robes and cardboard boxes. . . . She had finished for¬ 
ever with the Dasha who had rung Bezsonov’s bell ten 
days ago and had spoken those spiteful words to de¬ 
fenceless Katia. The crude, half-crazy girl had nearly 
done great harm. What an extraordinary thing it was! 
As if love were the only thing in the world. And it 
had not been love even, but mere curiosity, stimulated 
by the general turmoil of life in the house which was 
her home. 

At eleven o'clock, Dasha closed the piano, blew out 
the candles and went to bed. It was all done in a 
resolute and business-like manner. It was in these days 
that she decided to begin an independent life as soon as 
possible, to earn her own living and get Katia to come 
and live with her. She would surround her sister with 
such loving care that never again would she have need 
to weep in sorrow. 

At the end of May, after the examinations, Dasha 
went to her father, by way of Rininsk, along the Volga. 
She went straight from the train on board a white 
steamer, brilliantly illuminated in the dark night and 
black water, unpacked her things in a clean little cabin, 
reflecting that the independent life had not begun so 
badly, and, with her head on her elbow and smiling with 
pleasure, she fell asleep, lulled by the measured throb¬ 
bing of the engines. 

She was awakened by heavy footsteps and running 
about on deck. Through the Venetian shutters the sun¬ 
light streamed in, playing in liquid rays on the ma¬ 
hogany wash-stand. The breeze, which caught the can¬ 
vas blinds, smelt of honey flowers and wormwood. She 
opened the shutters. The ship stood near a deserted 
shore, where, beneath a recent landslide, strewn with 

[ 101 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


roots and clumps of earth, was a low bank, on which 
were some loads of pine boxes. A chestnut foal, sprawl¬ 
ing with its thin legs and thick knees, was drinking by 
the water. On the bank, in the form of a large red 
cross, the lighthouse beacon stuck out. Dasha jumped 
down from her berth and putting a tub on the floor, she 
filled a sponge with water and squeezed it over herself. 
It made her shiver so with cold that she huddled her 
knees to her chest. Then she put on some white stock¬ 
ings, a white dress and white cap, which had all been 
prepared overnight and sat on her with a severe smart¬ 
ness, and feeling independent, composed and frightfully 
happy, she went on deck. 

Liquid reflections of the sun danced about the whole 
of the white ship; it was painful to look at the water; 
the river shimmered and shone. On the further bank, 
hilly and wooded, old belfries, belted by silver birches, 
gleamed white. 

When the ship left the shore and making a circle 
steamed away down the river, coming to meet it were 
the banks of meadows and bare places and hills 
and woods and patches of various coloured green and 
stone. 

From among the hills, looking as though they were 
tumbling over, the thatched roofs of cottages could be 
seen here and there. In the sky heaped clouds with blue 
bases cast white shadows in the blue and yellow depths 
of the river. 

Dasha was sitting in a wicker chair, one leg crossed 
over the other, embracing her knee. The sparkling 
curves of the river, the clouds and their white reflec¬ 
tions, the birch-covered hills, the meadows and gusts of 
wind, which now smelt of swamp grasses, now of dry 
ploughed earth, of clover and wormwood, seemed to go 

[ 102 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


through and through her and filled her heart with a 
gentle triumph. 

Some man came up and stood sideways by the rail¬ 
ing. He appeared to be staring at her. Dasha forgot 
his existence now and again, but he still stood there. 
She took a firm resolve not to turn round, but being too 
hot-tempered to endure it calmly, she turned round 
sharply and angrily. Before her stood Teliegin, his hand 
on a rail, unable to make up his mind to approach her, 
to speak or to go away. Dasha laughed unexpectedly; 
he made her think vaguely of something pleasant and 
good. And the whole of the man, clumsy and strong 
and shy, seemed like a fitting completion to the beauti¬ 
ful river calm. She extended her hand. After exchang¬ 
ing greetings, Teliegin said: 

“I saw you come on board. We travelled in the 
same carriage from Petersburg, but I didn’t want to 
bother you; you looked so worried . . . I’m not in the 
way, am I?” 

“Do sit down.” She moved a chair for him. “I am 
going to my father’s. Where are you going?” 

“To tell the truth, I don’t know yet. For the time 
being I am going to Kineshma, to my people.” 

Teliegin sat down beside her and took off his hat. 
His eyebrows moved; wrinkles appeared on his fore¬ 
head. With eyes half closed he looked at the water, 
a foaming track cut by the ship. Above it, like midges, 
keen-winged gulls sought for food, dashing down on the 
water, flying up with hoarse, pitiful cries, and left far 
behind, circled and fought about a floating crust. 

“What a nice day it is, Daria Dmitrievna,” Teliegin 
said. 

“What a day, indeed, Ivan Ilyitch! On my word, I 
sit here wondering how I have come out of hell alive. 

[ 103 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


Do you remember our conversation in the street?” 

“I remember every word of it, Daria Dmitrievna.” 

“Since then terrible things have happened. I will tell 
you all about it some day.” She shook her head pen¬ 
sively. “You seemed to me to be the only sane man in 
Petersburg. That is why I like being with you.” She 
smiled gently and put her hand on his sleeve. Ivan 
Ilyitch’s eyelids twitched nervously and his lips com¬ 
pressed. “I trust you absolutely, Ivan Ilyitch. You are 
very strong, aren’t you?” 

“Far from it.” 

“And reliable.” Dasha felt all her thoughts to be 
kindly and straightforward and loving and that Ivan 
Ilyitch’s must likewise be good and true and strong. 
There was a special joy in being able to express freely 
and frankly all the bright emotions that filled her heart. 
“I believe, Ivan Ilyitch, that if you were to love, it would 
be in a manly way, tenderly and truly. And if you 
wanted something you would not let it go.” 

Ivan Ilyitch did not reply. He slowly pulled a piece 
of bread out of his pocket and began to throw it to 
the birds. A flock of white sea-gulls with excited cries 
made a dash to catch the crumbs. Dasha and Ivan Il¬ 
yitch walked over to the side of the ship. 

“Throw a piece to that one,” Dasha said, “it looks 
hungry.” 

Teliegin threw the remaining piece of bread high in 
the air. A fat sea-gull with a large head glided on 
motionless wings, split in two like a skin, then shook 
them, and instantly a dozen others dived after the fall¬ 
ing piece of bread to the water, which rushed from be¬ 
neath the ship in a warm foam. Dasha said: 

“Do you know the kind of woman I would like to be? 
I should like to give up bothering about myself. Whom 

[ 104 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


did I love and worry about? No one but myself. I was 
restless and stifled and miserable. I should like to be 
the kind of woman who wears a spotlessly clean apron 
and is over head and ears happily in love, and I want my 
life to feel like running barefoot over the dewy ground. 
I shall finish my course next year and I hope to earn 
lots of money and have Katia to live with me. I am 
going to be a different person. You will see, Ivan 
Ilyitch. You won’t despise me any more.” 

While she spoke Teliegin frowned and tried to con¬ 
tain himself, but at last he opened his mouth, showing 
a set of strong white teeth, and laughed aloud so heartily 
that his lashes grew wet. Dasha flushed with annoy¬ 
ance, but involuntarily her chin, too, began to dance, 
and she laughed with Teliegin, without in the least 
knowing what she was laughing at. 

“Daria Dmitrievna,” he said at last, “you are wonder¬ 
ful. ... At first I was mortally afraid of you. . . . 
But you are really wonderful. ...” 

“What an idea! Let us go to lunch,” Dasha said 
angrily. 

“With pleasure.” 

Ivan Ilyitch ordered a table to be placed on deck and 
began to study the wine-list, anxiously stroking his 
clean-shaven chin. 

“What would you say to a bottle of light white wine, 
Daria Dmitrievna?” 

“I should enjoy a little.” 

“Chablis or Barsac?” 

Dasha replied in an equally business-like way. 

“I don’t mind which.” 

“In that case let us have something sparkling.” 

Past them floated the hilly bank with its silky green 
rows of wheat and green-blue rye, and pink flowering 

[ 105 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


buckwheat. Round a bend, above clay cliffs and rub¬ 
bish, beneath their hats of straw, stood dwarfed little 
huts with glittering windows. Further on were ten crosses 
or so of the village cemetery and a six-winged mill with 
a broken side. A crowd of boys were running after 
the ship along the bank, throwing stones, which barely 
reached as far as the water. The ship turned. On 
the deserted bank was a low bush with some kites on it. 

A gust of warm wind blew under the tablecloth and 
under Dasha’s dress. The golden wine in large, cut 
glasses seemed like a gift of the gods. Dasha re¬ 
marked that she envied Ivan Ilyitch. He had his own 
work to do, was sure of life, while she had to pore 
for another eighteen months over her books with the 
additional misfortune of being a woman. 

Teliegin replied, laughing: 

“They have turned me out of the Obukhovsky works.” 

“You don’t mean it!” 

“I had twenty-four hours in which to clear out. I 
shouldn’t have been on the ship otherwise. Haven’t you 
heard what has happened at the works?” 

“No.” 

“I got off cheaply. Yes . . .” He stopped and 
rested his elbows on the table. “You’ve no idea how 
stupidly and inefficiently everything is done with us. 
The devil knows how we get our reputation, we Rus¬ 
sians. It’s a shame and a disgrace to think of it. Here 
we are, a capable people with a rich country, and how 
far do we see? About as far as the cheeky, grimy face 
of an office clerk. Instead of life we get ink and 
paper. You can’t think how much ink and paper we 
make. Since they started writing about Peter the Great 
they haven’t been able to stop. And there can be 
blood in ink, you know.” 

[ 106 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


Ivan Ilyitch moved away his glass of wine and 
lighted a cigarette. He was evidently reluctant to con¬ 
tinue. 

“But what is the use of thinking about it? We must 
hope that some day things will be better, no worse than 
with other people.” 

The whole of the day Dasha spent on deck. To a 
stranger it would have seemed that they talked the mer¬ 
est nonsense, but that was because they spoke in code. 
The most ordinary words, mysteriously and incompre¬ 
hensibly, assumed a double meaning. When Dasha with 
a motion of her eyes towards a short plump girl with 
round, surprised-looking eyes and no brows and her 
pink scarf blowing out behind her round-shouldered 
back and the second mate of the ship walking intently 
beside her, remarked, “Observe, the affair is going 
splendidly, Ivan Ilyitch,” what she really meant was, 
“If that had been you and I, things wouldn’t have gone 
quite so smoothly.” Neither of them could honestly 
have remembered what each had said, but Ivan Ilyitch 
was left with the impression that Dasha was more 
clever, subtle and observant than himself and to Dasha 
it seemed that Ivan Ilyitch was kinder, better and a 
thousand times more intelligent than she was. 

Dasha tried to collect her courage on several occasions 
to tell him about Bezsonov, but changed her mind. The 
sun scorched her knees, the wind, as with round caress¬ 
ing fingers, touched her cheeks, her shoulders, her neck, 
and the flapping flag on the front of the ship, the rope 
railing of the sides, the sparkling grey deck all seemed 
to float with her and Ivan Ilyitch among the clouds, past 
the low, gentle banks. Dasha thought: 

“I will tell him tomorrow. When it rains, I will tell 
him.” 


[ 107 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


Dasha, who, like most women, was a keen observer, 
at the end of the day knew more or less everything about 
their fellow passengers. To Ivan Ilyitch it seemed al¬ 
most miraculous. 

She decided that the rector of the Petersburg Uni¬ 
versity, a morose-looking man in smoked spectacles and 
an Inverness cape, must be a sharper, and though Ivan 
Ilyitch knew that he was the rector of the Petersburg 
University, he also began to entertain suspicions about 
him. On the whole his ideas of reality were a little 
shaken that day. He felt dazed or in a waking dream 
and now and again was unable to contain the onrush 
of a feeling of love towards everything that he saw 
and heard about him. He would gaze around and think 
how delightful it would be to throw oneself into the 
water after that girl with the bobbed hair if she were 
to bend still lower over the side with the crumbs she 
was throwing to the birds and fall in. 

At one o’clock at night such a sudden and delightful 
feeling of sleepiness came over Dasha that she could 
hardly walk to her cabin. Bidding him good night by 
the door, she said with a yawn: 

“Good-bye; mind you keep a lookout for that 
sharper.” 

Ivan Ilyitch instantly went into the first-class smok¬ 
ing-room, where the rector, who suffered from insomnia, 
was reading a book of Dumas’s. He watched him for 
some time thinking what an excellent man he appeared, 
even though he was a sharper. He returned to the 
brightly illuminated corridor, which smelt of machin¬ 
ery and varnished wood and Dasha’s perfumes. He 
walked past her door on tiptoe and once in his own 
cabin threw himself on his back on the bunk and closed 
his eyes. He was agitated and filled with sounds and 

[ 108 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


perfumes and the heat of the sun, but above it all he 
felt an incomprehensible, poignant sadness. 

At seven o’clock he was awakened by the ship’s siren. 
They had reached Kineshma. Ivan Ilyitch dressed hast¬ 
ily and peered out into the corridor. All the doors 
were closed; every one was still asleep. Dasha, too, 
slept. “I must get off here, or it will be damned awk¬ 
ward,” Ivan Ilyitch thought, and went on deck. He 
looked at Kineshma, reached so inconveniently soon, at 
its steep high bank and its wooden steps and its medley 
of tumble-down wooden houses and roofs and fences, 
at the yellow-green limes of the town garden, so bright 
in the early morning, and at the clouds of dust hanging 
motionless above the carts moving down the slope. A 
broad-faced sailor, treading with firm, bare feet along 
the deck, appeared with Teliegin’s brown trunk. . . . 

“No, no, take it back; I’ve changed my mind,” Ivan 
Ilyitch said excitedly. “I’ve decided to go on to Nijni. 
I find I needn’t go to Kineshma. Put it there under the 
bunk. Thank you.” 

Ivan Ilyitch remained in his cabin for three hours 
trying to make up his mind how to explain to Dasha 
what he considered a vulgar and intrusive thing to do. 
It was clear that he could not explain it; he could 
neither lie nor tell the truth. 

At eleven o’clock, contrite, hating and despising him¬ 
self, he appeared on deck, his hands behind his back, 
his gait jaunty, his face deceitful; looking for all the 
world like some bounder. But when he had gone all 
over the deck and not been able to find Dasha, he grew 
alarmed and searched for her everywhere. Dasha was 
nowhere to be found. His mouth grew parched. Some¬ 
thing had evidently happened. But suddenly he came 
upon her. Dasha was sitting in the same spot as yes- 

[ 109 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


terday, in a wicker chair, sad and quiet. On her lap 
was a book and a pear. She slowly turned her head 
towards him; her eyes opened wide as though with 
fear and filled with joy; the colour rose on her cheeks; 
the pear rolled from her lap. 

“You here? Didn’t you get off?” she asked softly. 

Ivan Ilyitch swallowed his emotion, Jsat down, be¬ 
side her and said in a hoarse voice: 

“I don’t know what you will think of me, but I 
purposely did not get off at Kineshma.” 

“I won’t tell you what I think of you.” Dasha 
laughed and suddenly put her hand in his, simply and 
gently, making Ivan Ilyitch’s head go round that day 
even more than yesterday. 


i 






[no] 


X 


As a matter of fact this is what had happened in the 
O'bukhovsky works, j On a rainy evening, when the 
phosphorescent sky was covered with wind-swept clouds, 
in a narrow street, stinking and dirty, with that partic¬ 
ular coal and iron dirt with which the neighbouring 
streets of a big works are habitually covered, there ap¬ 
peared among the crowd of workmen, who were re¬ 
turning to their homes after the hooter had gone, a 
stranger in a rubber coat with the hood up. 

For some time he followed them all, then he stopped 
and began to distribute leaflets to right and left, say¬ 
ing in a hoarse voice : 

“From the Central Committee. Read it, comrade.” 

The workmen took the leaflets as they walked and 
hid them in their pockets or in their caps. Of late 
among the sullen and angered mass of workmen, so 
jealously guarded by the authorities, through every pos¬ 
sible crevice there crept such young people, sent by in¬ 
visible friends. They appeared in the guise of ser¬ 
vants, unskilled labourers, hawkers, or like the present 
one, in a cloak and hood. They would give away leaf¬ 
lets and books, send forth rumours, explain the abuses 
of the management, and all would reiterate, “If you 
want to be human beings and not beasts, learn to hate 
those for whom you work.” The workmen felt and 
realized that on the Tsar’s government, which compelled 
them to work twelve hours a day and kept them from 
a full and happy life by this town of dirty streets and 

[ HI ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


night watchmen, which forced them to eat bad food and 
to dress in grimy clothes, to live with slovenly women 
who grew old while they were still young, who made 
them send their daughters into the streets and their 
boys into loathsome factories, there had come a judg¬ 
ment in the form of the Central Committee of the 
Workers’ Party. The committee was elusive and in¬ 
visible. The workmen hated the government because of 
their monotonous life at the foundry, the Central Com¬ 
mittee hated it in a bitter and business-like way. It 
kept on repeating incessantly, “Demand, shout, revolt. 
You are taught to be good, that is mere provocation. 
The proletariat’s virtue is to hate. You are told to be 
patient and forgiving, that is treason! You are not 
slaves. Hate and organize! You are enjoined to love 
your neighbour, but your neighbour uses your love to 
put you to the yoke. The only love that is worthy of 
man is the love for freedom. Remember, Russia was 
built by your hands. You alone are the lawful masters 
of the Russian State.” 

When the man in the rubber coat had nearly finished 
distributing all his leaflets a night-watchman forced a 
way through the crowd with his shoulders, saying hur¬ 
riedly, “You wait there,” and seized the man behind 
by his coat. But the man was wet and slippery. He 
wrenched himself free and bending to the ground, got 
away. There was a shrill whistle; from the distance an 
answering call came. A murmur arose among the dis¬ 
persing crowd, but the thing was done; the man in the 
rubber coat had disappeared. 

Some two days later the turners at the Obukhovskv 
works struck, quite unexpectedly to the management. 
They formulated demands which were not so serious as 
insistent. 

[ 112 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


Throughout the whole factory, which was badly 
lighted by dirty windows and grimy sky-lights, vague 
phrases and angry words flew about like sparks. The 
men standing at the lathes looked curiously at their 
superiors as they passed; they were evidently restrain¬ 
ing some terrific excitement and were waiting for some 
kind of order. 

Old Pavlov, a skilled man, a tell-tale and gossip, who 
was fidgeting about near a hydraulic press, had his foot 
accidentally crushed by a red-hot mould. He screamed 
wildly and the rumour instantly went about the works 
that some one had already been killed. At nine o’clock 
the black limousine car of the chief engineer dashed 
into the yard like a storm. 

Ivan Ilyitch arrived at the works at the usual hour. 
It was a huge structure built in the form of a circus. 
The windows were broken here and there; long chains 
hung down from the cranes; there were smelting fur¬ 
naces by the walls and the floor was of earth. Ivan 
Ilyitch stopped by the door. He shuddered from the 
morning cold and bid an amiable good morning to an 
incoming mechanic, Punko by name, whom he shook 
by the hand. 

They were busy on an urgent order for motor cheeks 
and Ivan Ilyitch discussed the work with Punko, con¬ 
sulting him in a thoughtful and business-like way. This 
small consideration gratified Punko. He had come to 
the works some fifteen years earlier as an unskilled 
labourer and had risen to be chief mechanic, thinking 
no end of his own knowledge and experience. Teli- 
egin knew that if Punko was satisfied the work would 
go quickly and well. 

As he went the round of the works Ivan Ilyitch ex¬ 
changed pleasantries with the moulders and smelters, 

[ 113 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


in that friendly, bantering kind of tone which more 
than anything defined their true relationship. It seemed 
to say, “You and I do the same work and are therefore 
comrades, but inasmuch as I am an engineer and you 
are a workman, we are actually enemies; however, since 
we like and respect each other, we may as well be 
friendly/' 

A crane moved towards one of the furnaces, its de¬ 
scending chain clanging as it went. Philipp Shubin and 
Ivan Oreshnikov, tall, muscular men, one of whom re¬ 
sembled Pugatchev, dark, with slightly grey hair and in 
round spectacles, the other, Ivan Ilyitch’s favourite, with 
curly beard, fair hair fastened by a strap, blue-eyed and 
athletic, began, the one to tear away the plate from the 
front of the furnace, the other to shove a claw into the 
high white-hot melting-pot. The chain clanged, the pot 
moved forward, and, hissing and gleaming and dropping 
bits of clinker, it floated away in the air to the middle 
of the room. 

“Stop,” called Oreshnikov, “lower it.” 

Once more the crane groaned; the melting-pot came 
down and a blinding stream of bronze, emitting bursting 
green stars, and sending an orange glow over the can¬ 
vas ceiling, poured out into the ground. There was a 
heavy, sickly smell of copper fumes. 

Just then the folding-doors leading into the next build¬ 
ing swung wide open and quickly and resolutely there 
walked in a young workman with a pale and angry 
face; he was in a black shirt and wore a cap pulled 
low over the eyes. 

“Stop work and get out!” he shouted in a cruel 
voice, looking askance at Teliegin and pulling his black 
moustache. “Do you hear, or don’t you?” 

“We hear, don’t shout,” Oreshnikov said quietly, 

I 114 ] 



THE ROAD TO CALVARY 

raising his head to the crane. “Wake up, Dmitri, let it 
down.” 

“If you’ve heard, then you know what to do; we 
won’t ask a second time,” the workman said, and turn¬ 
ing sharply, walked out of the building. 

Ivan Ilyitch, sitting near some freshly poured molten 
metal, began to dig the ground carefully with a piece of 
wire. Punko, sitting on a high bench by the desk at 
the door, passed his hand quickly over his grey, goat¬ 
like beard and said, blinking his eyes: 

“You’ve got to stop work whether you like it or not. 
The fellows don’t care who’s to feed the young ones 
when they kick you out of the works.” 

“You had better not talk, Vasili Stepanitch,” Oresh- 
nikov said in a thick voice. 

“What do you mean?” 

“This is our mess. It won’t be your children who 
will go hungry . . .You will soon be running to the 
managers . . . On this occasion you had better hold 
your tongue.” 

“What is the strike about?” Teliegin asked at last. 
“What do they want?” Oreshnikov, at whom Teliegin 
was looking, turned his eyes away. Punko answered 

for him. 

“It is the locksmiths who have struck. Sixty of their 
benches were put on piece work last week as an ex¬ 
periment and it happened that the men did not earn 
as much and had to put in overtime. There is a whole 
list of demands put up on the door of the sixth build¬ 
ing, but they are not serious ones.” 

He dug the pen fiercely into the pot and set to writing 
his report. Teliegin put his hands behind his back and 

[ 115 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


walked the length of the furnaces,, then said, with a 
motion of the eyes towards a round hole beyond which, 
in an insufferable white heat, there danced and writhed 
in snake-like coils the boiling bronze: 

“Oreshnikov, couldn’t we manage so that this 
shouldn’t spoil, eh?” 

Without replying Oreshnikov took off his leathern 
apron, which he hung on a nail, put on his sheepskin 
cap and long thick coat and said in a heavy bass voice 
that resounded throughout the building: 

“Come away, comrades. Any of you who want to 
can go to the sixth building through the middle door.” 

And he walked towards the exit. The men silently 
threw down their tools, one climbing down from the 
crane, another crawling out from a hole in the ground, 
and in a crowd they followed Oreshnikov. Suddenly 
something occurred at the door. A shrieking, angry 
voice broke out: 

“Writing! Writing! You dirty cur! There, you 
report about me! Go on, tell the managers!” It was 
Alexis Nosov, a moulder, who was thus shouting at 
Punko. His worn unshaven face with the dim, sunken 
eyes danced and writhed; a vein stood out on his thin 
neck. As he shouted he banged his fist on the edge 
of the desk. “Bloodsuckers! Torturers! We’ll find 
a knife even for the likes of you!” 

Just then Oreshnikov seized Nosov round the middle 
and pulled him away from the desk to the door. The 
latter instantly grew quiet. The workshop was empty. 

By mid-day the whole of the works was on strike. 
There were rumours that all was not quiet at the Baltic 
and Nevsky shipyards. The men stood about in big 
groups in the yard, waiting to hear the results of the 
conference between the management and the strike com- 

[ 116 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


mittee, which, it turned out, had long been in existence. 
The conduct of the strike was left in its hands. 

A meeting was going on in the office. The manage¬ 
ment were prepared for concessions. The only hitch 
now was the question of a gate in the wooden fence 
which the men demanded should be opened as otherwise 
they were compelled to plough through the mud for a 
quarter of a mile. Actually no one attached any im¬ 
portance to this gate, the matter was now merely one of 
prestige; the management grew obstinate and a long 
dispute arose. The strike committee placed this ques¬ 
tion of the gate on the social plane. At this moment, 
however, some one from the Ministry of the Interior 
rang up on the telephone to say that the demands of 
the strike committee were not to be conceded and that 
until special instructions had been given no conference 
was to be entered into with the committee. This order 
so prejudiced the whole affair that the senior engineer 
quickly dashed down to the town for an explanation. 
The men wondered; on the whole they were in a peace¬ 
ful mood. Several of the engineers went out among 
the crowd and explained the situation to them, per¬ 
plexed. Laughter could be heard here and there. No 
one could believe that because of some stupid door the 
whole of the works should be held up. At last, a big, 
burly, grey-haired engineer, Bulbin by name, appeared 
on the steps leading to the office and shouted out to the 
men in the yard that the conversations had been post¬ 
poned until tomorrow. 

Ivan Ilyitch stayed in the workshop until the evening 
and seeing that the furnaces would go out in any case, 
he went home in disgust. 

In the dining-room the futurists were gathered and 
appeared immensely interested in what was happening 

[1171 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


at the works. Ivan Ilyitch did not tell them anything, 
however; he thoughtfully munched the sandwiches which 
Elisaveta Kievna had placed before him, then he departed 
to his own room, locked the door and went to bed. Go¬ 
ing to the works next day he could see even from a dis¬ 
tance that something was wrong. All over the street, 
groups of workingmen, were standing talking together. 
Near the gates was a crowd of several hundred men who 
were humming like excited bees. 

Ivan Ilyitch was in a soft hat and civilian overcoat 
and so no one paid any attention to him. He listened to 
the various groups and was able to gather that the night 
before the strike committee had been arrested, that ar¬ 
rests were still going on from among the men, that a new 
committee had been formed which was meeting secretly 
in some public-house and that the demands which they 
now formulated were of a political kind, that the yard 
of the works was full of Cossacks, and, it was said, they 
had been ordered to disperse the crowd but had refused 
and that the Baltic and Nevsky shipyards and the 
French and several smaller works had joined in the 
strike. 

This was all so improbable that Ivan Ilyitch resolved 
to get to the office to learn the news, but with the great¬ 
est difficulty he managed to push his way only as far 
as the gates. Next to the familiar porter, Bakin, a sul¬ 
len man in a huge sheepskin coat, stood two tall Cos¬ 
sacks with their caps drawn over their ears and red side- 
whiskers. They looked cheerfully and impudently at the 
unhealthy faces of the workmen, worn from lack of 
sleep; their own faces were red and their uniforms were 
smart and they were adepts, no doubt, at quarrelling and 
sneering. 

“These peasants won’t stand on ceremony,” thought 

[ 118 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


Ivan Ilyitch and was going into the yard when the near¬ 
est Cossack barred his way, and looking at him steadily 
with his clear, merry eyes, he said: 

“Where are you going to? Back, there!” 

“I have to go to the office I am an engineer.” 

“Back there, I say!” 

Then voices were heard in the crowd. 

“Infidels! Hounds!” 

“You’ve spilt enough of our blood!” 

“Sated devils! Landlords!” 

At this moment, a short pimply youth pushed his way 
to the front of the crowd. He had a large crooked nose, 
wore a coat much too large for him and a tail brownish 
cap clumsily thrust on his curly hair. Waving an un¬ 
developed white hand, he began, in a lisping voice: 

“Comrades, Cossacks, are we not all Russians ? 
Against whom are you raising your arms? Against 
your own brothers. Are we your enemies that you 
should shoot us? What do we want? We want all 
Russians to be happy. We want every man to be free 
. . . We want to put an end to license. . . .” 

The Cossack compressed his lips, looked the young 
man up and down contemptuously, turned and walked 
through the gate. The other one said in a commanding 
and haughty voice: 

“We can’t allow any mutiny because we have taken 
the oath.” 

Then the first, who had evidently thought of a re¬ 
joinder, called out to the curly-haired youth: 

“Brothers, brothers . . .You hitch your trousers up, 
or they’ll fall down!” 

The two Cossacks laughed. 

Ivan Ilyitch moved away from the gates and the surge 
of the crowd pushed him to the side against the fence, 

[ 119 ] 


1 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 

where there were some rusty cog-wheels. He got on 
them and caught sight of Oreshnikov, who with his 
sheepskin cap at the back of his head, was calmly 
munching some bread. He gave a motion of the brows 
in Teliegin’s direction and said in his bass voice: 

“A pretty business this,, Ivan Ilyitch.” 

“Good morning, Oreshnikov. How do you think it 
will all end?” 

“We shall go on shouting for a time and then touch 
our caps. Every revolt ends like that. They have 
brought out their Cossacks. With what can we fight 
them? Unless I throw this onion at the two of them and 
kill them. Queer devils.” 

Just then there was a murmur in the crowd and then 
silence. At the gate an abrupt commanding voice was 
heard in the stillness. 

“I ask you to go to your homes. Your grievances will 
be seen into. Please go away quietly.” 

The crowd became excited; it moved backwards and to 
the side. Some walked away altogether, others moved 
further back. The talk grew louder. Oreshnikov said: 

“This is the third time they have asked us.” 

“Who was it spoke?” 

“Esau.” 

“Comrades, don’t go away,” some one said in an ex¬ 
cited voice, and on the cog-wheels, behind Ivan Ilyitch, 
there jumped up a pale, agitated man in a large hat and 
with a black tangled beard, beneath which his smart 
jacket was fastened with a safety-pin at the neck. His 
face seemed familiar to Ivan Ilyitch. 

“Comrades, don’t go away on any account”; he ges¬ 
ticulated with his clenched fists; “we know for certain 
that the Cossacks have refused to fire. The manage¬ 
ment is negotiating indirectly with the strike committee. 

[ 120 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


Besides which, the railwaymen are at this moment con¬ 
sidering the question of a general strike. The govern¬ 
ment is in a panic.” 

“Hurrah!” some one called joyfully. The crowd be¬ 
gan to murmur and to shout as it surged forward. Men 
could be seen running up the street. 

Ivan Ilyitch sought Oreshnikov with his eyes, but the 
latter had moved on some distance and now stood by the 
gate. From time to time his ear caught the word, “Rev¬ 
olution, revolution.” 

A frightened joyous thrill went all over Ivan Ilyitch. 
Climbing up on the cog-wheels he looked upon the 
crowd, which was now bigger, and suddenly he saw 
Akundin standing about two steps away by the fence. 
He did not recognize him at first. Ivan Avvakumovitch 
Akundin wore spectacles, a cap with a large peak and a 
black cape. With head bent, he was viciously gnawing 
his thumb-nail. Pushing his way towards him was a 
man with trembling lips and in a top-hat. Teliegin heard 
him call to Akundin. 

“Go, Ivan Avvakumovitch, they are expecting you.” 

“I will not go,” Akundin bit off a piece of nail and 
stared with vacant eyes at the man approaching him. 

“The whole committee has met. They do not want 
to come to a decision without you.” 

“I stay here for a particular reason, that is clear,” 
Akundin replied. 

“Are you mad? You see what is going on. They’ll 
begin to fire at any moment, I tell you. ...” The 
cheeks and lips of the man in the top-hat trembled vio¬ 
lently. 

“First, I must ask you not to shout,” Akundin said, 
“and then to go and take your attitude of compromise 
away with you. I won’t take back my word. ...” 

[121 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


“The devil knows what madness this all is!” said the 
man in the top-hat, pushing his way through the crowd. 
To Akundin there walked up the workman who had 
taken the men off their work in Teliegin’s workshop yes¬ 
terday. Akundin said something to him and the former 
nodded and disappeared. The same short sentence and 
the nod of the head were repeated with another man, 
whom Teliegin did not know. It was clear that Akundin 
was giving some order. The crowd on the further side 
of the gate became agitated again and shouting was 
heard. Suddenly three sharp volleys were fired in suc¬ 
cession and immediately there was silence. “A-a-h!” 
groaned a stifled voice, as though intentionally. The 
crowd parted and backed away from the gate. In the 
trampled mud, face downwards and knees under him, 
lay a Cossack. Instantly a protest arose from the crowd, 
“Don’t, don’t!” The gates were opened. From behind 
somewhere a fourth revolver report was heard and some 
stones were flung which hit against the iron palings. 
Just then Teliegin caught sight of Oreshnikov, who was 
standing hatless and open-mouthed in the very front 
of the fast dispersing crowd. In his horror he seemed 
to have grown into the ground with his huge boots. 
At this moment a rifle shot rent the air like a crack of 
a whip, another, and Oreshnikov sank quietly to his 
knees, then fell flat on the ground. 

Within a week the investigation into the disturbances 
at the Obukhovsky was finished. Ivan Ilyitch was one 
of the people who were suspected of sympathizing with 
the workmen. He was summoned to the office and, 
surprising every one, he said some sharp things to the 
directors, expressed his disapproval of the existing ar¬ 
rangements and signed his resignation. 


[ 122 ] 


XI 


Doctor Dmitri Stepanovitch Bulavin, Dasha’s father, 
was sitting in the dining-room at a bent, steaming 
samovar reading “The Samara News.” When his cig¬ 
arette had burned down to the end, he took another 
from a flat cigarette-case, and lighted it at the end of the 
first. He coughed, turned purple in the face and put 
his hand in at his unfastened shirt and scratched his 
hairy chest. His starched shirt-front and neck-tie were 
lying beside him on the table. As he read he kept 
dropping cigarette-ash on the newspaper, on his shirt 
and on the tablecloth. 

The creaking of a bed was heard from the other side 
of the door, then footsteps, and Dasha came into the 
room, a white dressing-gown flung over her nightdress. 
She was still rosy and half sleepy. Dmitri Stepanovitch 
looked at his daughter over the top of his pince-nez 
with those cold, grey, humorous eyes of his—like Dasha’s 
—and offered her his cheek. Dasha kissed him and sat 
down opposite, reaching out for the bread and butter. 

“Another windy day; what a bore!” she said. For 
the past two days a strong hot wind had been blowing. 
Limey dust hung in clouds over the town, obscuring 
the sun. These thick clouds of stinging dust blew in 
gusts about the streets and the few passers-by could 
be seen turning their backs on it and shutting their 
eyes painfully. The dust crept in everywhere and one 
felt it scrunch between the teeth. The wind shook the 
windows and rattled the iron roof and withal it was 

[ 123 ] 


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hot and stuffy and even the rooms smelt of the street. 

“There is an epidemic of eye disease in the town,” 
Dmitri Stepanovitch observed. Dasha did not reply; 
she merely sighed. Her father was interested in epi¬ 
demics and politics, while she, oh God! what difference 
did it make how many epidemics of eye diseases there 
were in the town when her own affairs were in such 
vague and unsatisfactory condition? 

It was a fortnight now since Dasha had taken leave 
of Teliegin at the ship’s gangway—he had gone with 
her as far as Samara—and she had been living with 
her father with nothing to do in that new and unfa¬ 
miliar house, where boxes of unpacked books were still 
standing in the drawing-room since the winter and the 
curtains had not yet been put up. Not a comfortable 
corner was to be found; it was like living in an inn. 

As she stirred her tea, Dasha, in despair, stared 
through the window at the whirling clouds of dust. 
The last two years seemed to have gone as a dream and 
there she was at home again, and of all the hopes and 
fears and the many people she had met in noisy Peters¬ 
burg nothing seemed to remain but these clouds of 
dust. 

“The Archduke has been killed,” Dmitri Stepanovitch 
observed, turning over a fresh sheet of his paper. 

“Which one?” 

“How, which one? The Austrian Archduke has been 
assassinated in Sarayevo.” 

“Was he young?” 

“I don’t know. Pour me out some more tea, please.” 

Dmitri Stepanovitch put a tiny piece of sugar in 
his mouth—he always drank tea with the sugar in his 
mouth—and looked good-humouredly at Dasha, who was 
standing by the samovar. 

[ 124 ] 


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“Tell me,” he said, “has Ekaterina definitely parted 
from her husband? I don’t quite understand/’ 

“I have already told you, father.” 

“Never mind. ...” 

And again he grew absorbed in his paper. Dasha 
went over to the window. How depressing! She re¬ 
called the white ship and above all, the sun, which was 
everywhere, in the blue sky, on the clean deck; every¬ 
thing was full of sunshine, moisture and freshness. 
It had seemed to her then that the shining road that 
wound slowly over the broad river was leading to hap¬ 
piness, that the expanse of water and the ship, “Fedor 
Dostoievski,” and herself and Teliegin were all pour¬ 
ing into that blue, shoreless sea of light and joy which 
was happiness. 

Ivan Ilyitch suffered greatly. As they neared Sam¬ 
ara he grew despondent, lost his liveliness and mixed 
things up, somehow. Dasha imagined they were float¬ 
ing in towards happiness; she felt his gaze on her„ 
like the gaze of a strong man who had been crushed 
by wheels. She was sorry for him and consequently 
tender and grateful, but how could she break down the 
barrier even ever so little when she realized that there 
would instantly come about that which must only hap¬ 
pen at the end of the journey? They would not be 
floating into happiness, but would be stealing it, im¬ 
patiently and foolishly. It was for this reason that she 
was gentle with Ivan Ilyitch as a sister would be and 
no more. To him it seemed that he would mortally 
offend her if he even hinted by so much as a word at 
what had been keeping him awake for the past four 
nights and placed him in that strange half visionary 
kind of world, where all external objects glided by like 
shadows in a blue haze, and where Dasha’s challenging 

[ 125 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


and disturbing grey eyes scorched him and where he 
was conscious only of scents and sunlight and an in¬ 
cessant pain in his heart. 

At Samara Ivan Uyitch had boarded another vessel 
and gone back, and Dasha’s shining sea, towards which 
she had drifted, vanished, fell to pieces, and outside the 
shaking windows, clouds of dust rose up. 

“The Austrians will give these Serbians what for,” 
said Dmitri Stepanovitch, taking off his pince-nez and 
throwing down his paper. 

“And what do you think of the Slav question,, Kit¬ 
ten ?” 

“Will you be home to dinner, Father?” Dasha asked, 
returning to the table. 

“Quite impossible. I have a case of scarlet fever in 
the country at the Postnikovs’.” 

“You must be mad to drive into the country through 
this dust.” 

Dmitri Stepanovitch slowly put on his shirt-front, 
buttoned his coat, felt in his pockets to make sure that 
everything necessary should be there and combed the 
grey hair on his forehead with a broken comb. 

“Well, and what do you think of the Slav question, 
Kitten?” 

“I really don’t know. Why do you want to bother 
me?” 

“I have my own ideas about it, anyhow, Daria Dmit¬ 
rievna”—he evidently had no desire to set out on his 
drive and on the whole he liked to discuss politics in the 
morning over the samovar—“the Slav question—mark 
my words, the Slav question is the peg of world politics. 
Many nations have broken their necks over it. That is 
why the place where the Slavs originated—the Balkans 
—is the appendix of Europe. But why, you will ask. 

[ 126 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


Let me explain.” And he bent his fat fingers. “First, 
the Slavs number more than two hundred millions and 
they breed like rabbits. Secondly, the Slavs succeeded 
in creating a powerful military state like the Russian 
Empire. Thirdly, the small Slav groups, notwithstand¬ 
ing the process of assimilation, are organizing into in¬ 
dependent units and are striving toward what is known 
as Slav federation. Fourthly, and this is most impor¬ 
tant of all, morally the Slavs represent something quite 
new and in a sense highly dangerous to European civ¬ 
ilization, the type of a seeker of God. And God-seek¬ 
ing—mark my words, Kitten—is a negation and de¬ 
struction of our modern civilization. I seek God, that 
is, the truth within myself. For this purpose I must 
be free, so I destroy the moral foundations beneath 
which I am buried and I destroy the state that keeps 
me in chains. Why can’t I lie? steal? kill? Tell 
me? You think that truth lies only in the good. But 
I will go and kill purposely and cross that most painful 
thing of all, conscience, and will find truth in despair.” 

“You had better start, Father,” Dasha said dejectedly. 

“I will seek truth there”—Dmitri Stepanovitch pointed 
with his finger as though indicating the cellar, but 
stopped suddenly and turned to the door. A bell was 
ringing in the hall. 

“Dasha, open the door.” 

“I can’t. I’m not dressed.” 

“Matrena!” Dmitri Stepanovitch called. “Oh, that 
wretched woman, I’ll wring her neck one of these days!” 
He went to the door himself and came back with a letter 
in his hand. 

“From Katia,” he said; “wait, don’t snatch it out of 
my hand. I will finish first. . . .You see, God-seek¬ 
ing begins, first of all, by destroying. That is a very 

[ 1271 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


dangerous period and contagious as well. Russia is 
going through that aspect of the disease just now. . . . 
Everything is falling to pieces, you see. Kitten. When 
you go out in the evening along the main street you 
constantly hear some one crying aloud for help. Hot¬ 
heads saunter about the streets, working fellows from 
the outskirts and the factories. They won’t let any one 
pass. The police are quite unable to cope with their 
insolence. They’ve got no moral sense, and these hooli¬ 
gans, blackguards and scoundrels are God-seekers. 
Today they behave in this disgusting fashion in the 
main street, tomorrow they will do it throughout the 
whole of Russia. And it is all done for the sake of 
destruction. They have no other conscious purpose. 
In the mass the people are going through the first phase 
of God-seeking—the destruction of foundations.” 

Dmitri Stepanovitch sniffed and smoked his ciga¬ 
rette. Dasha seized Katia’s letter and went into her own 
room. He went on expounding for some time longer, 
walking about and banging doors in that large, half- 
empty and dusty house with its painted floors. Then 
he set out on his drive. 

“Dasha, dear,” Katia wrote, “all this time I have no 
news of you and Nikolai. I am living in Paris. The 
season here is at its height. Skirts are being worn very 
narrow at the bottom. I do not know where I shall 
go at the end of June. Paris is very beautiful. I wish 
you could see it. Absolutely every one dances the 
tango. At lunch between the dishes people get up and 
dance and at five o’clock and at dinner and so on 
through the night. I cannot get away from the music, 
which is somehow so sad and painful and sweet. I 
feel as if I am burying my youth, something that I 
can never recall. When I look at the women here with 

[ 128 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


their low-cut dresses and their painted eyes and their 
smart men, I feel frightened and sad. I feel wretchedly 
miserable. I keep thinking that some one is going to 
die. I am anxious about father; he is no longer young. 
The place here is full of Russians, mostly people we 
know. We meet somewhere or other every day. It is 
just as if we had never left Petersburg. By the way, 
some one here told me that Nikolai was very friendly 
with some woman. A widow with two children and 
a baby. It hurt me very much at first. Then somehow 
I felt sorry for the little one. What harm had it done? 
Dasha, my dear, I sometimes wish I had a child. But 
that could only be with a man one loved. When you 
marry you must have children, dear. ...” 

Dasha read the letter several times; the tears came 
into her eyes, especially at the part about the innocent 
child. She sat down to write a reply, which took her 
until dinner. She dined alone, merely touching her 
food, then went into the study where she hunted among 
a heap of old magazines and discovered a very long 
novel entitled “She Forgave.” With this she lay down 
on the couch amidst the books strewn about and read 
until the evening. At last her father returned tired out 
and covered with dust. He sat down to supper and to 
all her questions he replied with monosyllables, but she 
managed to draw out of him that his scarlet fever pa¬ 
tient—a boy of three, the son of the clerk of the court— 
had died. Dmitri Stepanovitch sniffed, put his pince- 
nez away in a case and went to bed. Dasha lay in 
bed with the sheet over her head, weeping bitterly about 
many sad things. 

Two days passed. The dust storm ended in a rain 
storm. The rain beat on the roof all night and Sun¬ 
day morning broke, gentle and fresh and clean. 

r 129 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


Dasha had no sooner dressed than an old acquaintance 
called to see her. This was Semion Semionovitch Gov- 
iadin, the Zemstvo statistician, a lean, round-shouldered 
and pale man with a red beard and hair combed over 
his ears. He smelt of sour cream. He abstained from 
intoxicating drink;, tobacco and meat and was in bad 
repute with the police. After wishing Dasha good morn¬ 
ing, he said, without the least why or wherefore: 

“I have come for you, woman; let us go on the 
Volga.” 

“So it has all come to Goviadin, the Zemstvo statis¬ 
tician,” Dasha thought and taking a white sunshade, 
she followed Semion Semionovitch down to the Volga, 
to the bank where the boats stood. 

Among the long wooden wharves which were filled 
with corn and timber and piles of bales containing wool 
and cotton, there wandered to and fro loaders and 
porters, broad-shouldered, broad-chested, bare-footed 
peasants with bare heads and bare necks. Some were 
playing at heads and tails, others slept on the sacks and 
timber. In the distance some thirty men or so with 
cases on their shoulders were running up and down the 
shaking gangways. By the carts a drunken man was 
standing; he was covered with mud and dust and there 
was blood on his cheek. He was holding his trousers 
with both hands and swearing in a lazy kind of way. 

“These people know neither holidays nor rest,” Sem¬ 
ion Semionovitch observed in the manner of a school¬ 
master, “while you and I, both of us clever and intel¬ 
lectual, go out to admire nature at our ease. The cause 
of the injustice lies in the social structure.” 

And with an “Excuse me, please,” he stepped across 
a huge, bare-footed, broad-chested fellow, who was ly¬ 
ing flat on the ground. Another was sitting on a stump, 

[ 130 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


munching a French roll. Dasha heard the first say: 

“Philip, that’s the kind of a girl for us, eh?” 

“Too clean. She’d be a lot of trouble.” 

“She’d be all right when I got a go at her.” 

Along the smooth, yellow river, nearly a mile broad, 
among the shimmering reflections of the sun, dark sil¬ 
houettes of boats moved towards the further sandy 
bank. Goviadin hired a boat and asking Dasha to steer, 
he took the oars and began to pull up-stream. Soon the 
perspiration appeared on his pale face. 

“Sport is a great thing,” Semion Semionovitch ob¬ 
served, taking off his coat and shamefacedly hiding 
his braces in the head of the boat. His arms were 
scraggy and thin with long hair on them; they looked 
like worms writhing in celluloid cuffs. Dasha opened 
her sunshade and looked at the water with half-closed 
eyes. 

“Forgive me for my indiscreet question, Daria Dmit¬ 
rievna. It is said in the town that you are going to 
get married. Is it true?” 

“It is not true.” 

At this he smiled blandly, which was out of keeping 
with his troubled and intellectual face. In a thin voice 
he attempted to sing “Down the Mother Volga,” but 
choked and in his confusion, he began to pull at the 
oars with all his might. 

A boat full of people was coming towards them. In 
it sat three lower middle-class women in red and green 
woollen dresses. They were nibbling sunflower seeds 
and spitting the shells into their laps. Opposite them 
sat a drunken bounder with curly hair and black mous¬ 
tache. He was rolling his eyes as though at death’s 
door as he played a polka on a concertina. Another 
was sculling furiously, rocking the boat, and a third 

[ 131 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


waved a scull in the air and yelled at Sernion Semiono- 
vitch: “Mind! You there, damn you !” 

And with volleys of abuse they nearly barged into 
them. 

At last the boat scraped along the sandy bottom. 
Dasha jumped ashore. Sernion Semionovitch once more 
put on his braces and coat. 

“I may be a townsman, but I love nature,” he said, 
blinking, “especially when, it is set off by the figure of 
a girl. It puts me in mind of the Turgeniev vein.” 

As they toiled through the hot sand, into which they 
sank to the knees almost, Goviadin stopped now and 
again and wiping his face with his handkerchief, ex¬ 
claimed: “Do look! Isn’t this a lovely spot?” 

They reached the end of the sand and mounted a 
low cliff, from whence began meadows with here and 
there mown grass, which lay in rows, withering. There 
was a strong smell of clover. At the edge of a narrow 
ravine, full of water, was a thick hazel-copse. Below, 
hidden by the wet grass, a murmuring stream fell into 
another lake—a round one, on the bank of which stood 
two old lime trees and a gnarled pine with a single 
branch, outstretched like an arm. Further on, a wild 
rose bloomed on a narrow crest. It was a spot favoured 
by woodcocks during migration. Dasha and Sernion 
Semionovitch sat down on the grass. Below them the 
blue! sky was reflected in the green of the leaves, the 
water in the winding ravines sparkled in the sun. A 
little distance away from Dasha two grey birds hopped 
about on a bush, chirping monotonously. A deserted 
dove kept on cooing in the copse with all the grief of 
an abandoned lover. Dasha sat with her legs stretched 
out, her hands resting on her lap, listening to the plaint 
of the forlorn lover. 

[ 132 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


“Daria Dmitrievna,” it seemed to say, “oh, Daria 
Dmitrievna, what is the matter with you? Why are 
you so sad and want to cry? Nothing has happened as 
yet and you mourn as if your life were at an end, as 
if it had flown away forever. You must have been 
born a cry-baby.” 

“I want to be candid with you, Daria Dmitrievna,” 
Goviadin began. “May I dispense with convention?” 

“Say what you want to; it makes no difference to 
me,” Daria Dmitrievna replied. She put her hands at 
the back of her head and lay down on her back on the 
grass to look at the sun and to avoid Semion Semiono- 
vitch’s nervous eyes which were taking stealthy glances 
at her white stockings. 

“You are a proud girl and have courage. You are 
young, beautiful and brimming over with life. . . 

“Well, what then?” Dasha asked. 

“Have you never had a desire to break the ordinary 
morality that has been instilled into you by your up¬ 
bringing and by society? Must you really suppress all 
your beautiful instincts for the sake of this morality 
which is no longer accepted by those who know?” 

“And supposing I do not want to suppress my in¬ 
stincts, what then?” Dasha asked. She waited with a 
lazy curiosity for what he would say next. The heat of 
the sun warmed her body. It was so pleasant to look 
at the sky, at the sparkling clouds in the blue depths, 
that she had no desire to think or to move. 

Semion Semionovitch was silent, digging his finger 
into the ground. Dasha knew that he was married to 
Maria Davidovna Posern, a midwife. Twice a year 
Maria Davidovna would collect her three children, leave 
her husband and go to her mother’s house across the 

[ 133 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


street. To his fellow workers in the Zemstvo offices 
Semion Semionovitch explained away these family ex¬ 
plosions by the emotional and restless character of his 
wife, while Maria Davidovna, in the Zemstvo hospital, 
explained them by the fact that her husband was ready 
to betray her with any one you please, that he thought 
of nothing else, and that if he refrained from doing 
so, it was only because he was a lazy coward, which was 
absolutely intolerable, and that she was sick of the sight 
of his long turnip face. During these family differences 
Semion Semionovitch would cross the street, hatless, 
many times a day, and then husband and wife would be 
reconciled and Maria Davidovna and the children and 
the pillows would return to their own home. 

“When a man and a woman are left alone together, 
her one desire is to give, his to possess her body, ,, Sem¬ 
ion Semionovitch said at last, clearing his throat. “Be 
straightforward and honest with yourself. Search 
within and you will find that with all the falsehoods 
and prejudices there is a burning and natural desire for 
wholesome emotion. ,, 

“I have no burning desire of any kind now. How 
would you explain that ?” Dasha asked. She was amused 
in a lazy kind of way. Bees circled above her head 
among the pale wild roses and the yellow dust, and the 
forlorn lover continued his murmuring in the copse. 
“Daria Dmitrievna, Daria Dmitrievna, are you not in 
love? In love, in love, on my honour. That is why 
you are so sad/’ Dasha listened and began to laugh. 

“Some sand has got in your shoe; let me shake it 
out,” Semion Semionovitch remarked in a peculiarly 
smothered voice, and took hold of the shoe by the heel. 
At this Dasha sat up quickly, snatched the shoe from 
him and struck him in the face with it. 

[ 134 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


“You blackguard!” she said. “I never thought you 
were so disgusting!” 

She shook the sand out of her shoe, put it on, got 
up, took her sunshade, and with a glance at Goviadin, 
she walked away towards the river. 

“How stupid I am, to be sure! I did not even ask 
for his address and I don’t know where to write to 
him,” she thought as she descended the cliff. “It was 
either Kineshma or Nijni. Now you must just put up 
with Goviadin. Oh, heavens!” She turned round. 
Semion Semionovitch was stalking over the sand and 
grass like a crane; his head was turned away. “I must 
write to Katia and tell her that I am in love.” And 
listening intently, Dasha repeated in a whisper, “Dear, 
dear, dear Ivan Ilyitch. ...” 

Suddenly a voice was heard. “I won’t go into the 
water! Let me go, you will tear my skirt!” In the 
water to his knees a naked man was standing by the 
bank. He was middle-aged, had yellow ribs and a short 
beard; a black string cross hung on his chest. He was 
ugly and furious and was silently dragging a wretched 
woman into the water. She kept on repeating, “Let me 
go, you will tear my skirt!” 

Dasha ran along the bank to the boat as fast as she 
could. She nearly choked in her shame and disgust. 
She felt as if she could not possibly survive it. She had 
no sooner pushed the boat into the water than Goviadin 
came running up, panting. Without a word or a look 
at him she sat down at the rudder, opened her sunshade 
and did not speak the rest of the way home. 

In some curious, incomprehensible way she began to 
blame Teliegin after this outing, as though he were re¬ 
sponsible for the dullness of this sun-baked, dusty, pro¬ 
vincial town with its stinking fences and its sordid 

1135 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


wooden doorsteps, its box-like houses of bricks, its tele¬ 
graph and telephone poles in place of trees, its heavy, 
sultry noons, when an ugly woman with some stale fish 
strung on a pole would walk down the greyish white 
broiling streets and peer in at the windows calling “Fish, 
fish!” and a hungry, half wild mongrel dog would come 
up and sniff at them, and the excruciating strains of a 
barrel organ could be heard down the street, and when 
you knew that every one in the town had eaten his 
fill of pie and okroshka and was snoring fast asleep. 

Teliegin was to blame too, because Dasha was particu¬ 
larly sensitive just now to the dullness of this dead 
place, which seemed to have no intention of making a 
move even though you ran out into the streets and cried 
wildly, “I want to live, to live!” 

And it was his fault, too, for being so modest and 
shy. She could hardly take him by the neck and say 
“I love you.” And he was to blame for not letting 
her have news of himself. He seemed to have sunk 
into the ground. He had probably forgotten all about 
their journey on board that steamer. 

And to make matters worse, on a sultry night Dasha 
had a dream, the same dream she had once had in 
Petersburg, when she awoke in tears, and just as then, 
she could remember nothing of it. It faded from her 
memory like the steam from the windows. It only left 
on her the impression of some terrible foreboding. 
Dmitri Stepanovitch recommended her an injection of 
arsenic. And then another letter came from Katia. She 
wrote: 

“Dear Dasha, I miss you very much and every one 
belonging to me and Russia. I get to feel more and 
more that I am to blame in my break with Nikolai and 
in something still more important. I wake up in the 

[ 136 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


morning with a sense of guilt and go about the whole 
day with a feeling of spiritual oppression. And then— 
I don’t know whether I have really told you this—for 
some time past I have been followed about by a man. 
When I leave the house he is coming towards me. When 
going up a lift in a shop he is sure to jump in some¬ 
where on the way. Yesterday I went to the museum 
at the Louvre, but I was so tired that I sat down on a 
bench, when suddenly I had a sensation as though some 
one had passed his hand down my back. I turned 
and saw him sitting a little away from me. Haggard, 
his dark hair turning gray and his beard looking as if 
it had been glued to his cheeks. His hands were rest¬ 
ing on his cane and he stared solemnly with his sunken 
eyes. I could hardly find my way to the door. He 
never speaks or bothers me, but I am afraid of him. 
He seems to be walking round me in a kind of maze.” 

Dasha showed the letter to her father. The next 
morning when Dmitri Stepanovitch was engrossed in 
his paper, he remarked in an off-hand way: 

“Kitten, you had better go to the Crimea.” 

“Why?” 

“You must find Nikolai Ivanovitch and tell him that 
he is a fool. Make him go to Paris to his wife. How¬ 
ever, let him do as he pleases. . . . It is their own af¬ 
fair.” 

Dmitri Stepanovitch was angry and excited, though 
usually he could not bear to show his feelings. Dasha 
realized that she was compelled to go and rejoiced. She 
pictured the Crimea as a blue, wave-washed, wonder¬ 
ful place. Long shadows from the tall poplars, stone 
seats, a scarf thrown over the head and restless eyes 
that followed her. She packed hastily and set out for 
Evpatoriya, where Nikolai Ivanovitch had gone for the 
bathing. 


[ 137 ] 


XII 


In the Crimea this summer there was an unusual in¬ 
flux of people from the north. Along the whole of the 
sea front there were to be seen smart people from Pe¬ 
tersburg with the skin peeling off their noses, who had 
come with their catarrhs and bronchitis, and noisy, 
shabby Muscovites with their lazy singing speech, 
and dark-eyed Kievites, who made no distinction be¬ 
tween the vowels o and a, and rich Siberians, who de¬ 
spised this Russian hustle and bustle. And all basked 
in the sun and became quite tanned—young women and 
lanky youths and priests and civil servants and re¬ 
spectable family men. And all lived, as every one lived 
at the time in Russia—unbuckling their belts, so to 
speak. 

In the height of the summer, what with the salt water 
and the heat and tanned skins, these people lost every 
sense of shame. Town clothes were held to be vulgar 
and women were to be seen with no other covering than 
a Turkish towel and men who looked like the figures on 
Etrurian vases. 

Amid the environment of blue waves, hot sand and 
naked bodies that swarmed all over the place, family 
foundations were shaken. Everything seemed possible 
here. What the reckoning would be away back in the 
North in their dull homes with the rain beating against 
the windows and the telephone bell buzzing in the hall, 
when each would feel under some obligation to the other 
—well, was it worth worrying about that? With a 

[ 138 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 

gentle murmur, the sea washed against the shore, ca¬ 
ressing the feet and body stretched on the sand, touch¬ 
ing arms thrown out and eyelids closed with a soft, 
warm touch. Everything was easy-going and enjoyable, 
even the most dangerous thing. 

This summer the folly and indulgence of the visitors 
had passed all bounds. It seemed as though some shaft 
of fire had shot straight from the sun into the midst 
of these people one June morning and destroyed their 
memories and their prudence. 

Along the whole of the sea front not a single happy 
house was to be found. Unexpectedly the most stable 
connections were broken. The very air seemed filled 
with love-making, soft laughter and indescribable non¬ 
sense, spoken on the hot earth, that abounded in ruins 
of ancient towns and the bones of dead people. There 
was a storing up, like the rains in the autumn, for a 
general reckoning and for bitter tears. 

Dasha reached Evpatoriya in the afternoon. From the 
road which wound like a dusty white ribbon over the flat 
steppes, past salt-marshes and scattered straw and a tall 
building here and there in the distance, she saw a large 
wooden ship against the sun. It moved slowly through 
the steppes among the wormwood, its numerous black 
sails hoisted sideways. The sight was so wonderful that 
Dasha could not help an exclamation of surprise. An 
old Armenian who sat next to her in the motor-car, 
said with a smile, “You will soon see the sea.” 

The car turned by the dam of a salt works on a sandy 
rise and from thence the sea came in view. It seemed 
to lie higher than the land; it was a dark blue, covered 
with long lines of foam. A keen wind whistled in the 
ears. Dasha pressed the leather case she held on her 
knees and thought, “It is beginning now.” 


[ 139 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


At this moment Nikolai Ivanovitch Smokovnikov was 
sitting in the pavilion, which stood on piles by the sea. 
He was drinking coffee with the resigned stage-lover. 
Other visitors had come out for their after-dinner rest 
and they occupied little tables, talking across to one an¬ 
other about the beneficial results of the iodine treatment, 
about the bathing and about women. It was cool in the 
pavilion. The wind flapped the tablecloths and the 
women’s scarves. A small yacht passed and some one 
called out from it, “Tell Lisa we are waiting.” Some 
Muscovites, well-known people, came in a crowd and 
sat down by a large table. The resigned stage-lover 
frowned and went on explaining the plot of a play he 
was intending to write. 

“If it had not been for the cursed brandy, I would 
long ago have finished the first act,” he said with a 
thoughtful candour, looking Nikolai Ivanovitch in the 
face. “You’ve got a clear head, Kolia, you will catch 
my idea. A beautiful young woman is pining in de¬ 
spair; everything about her is so ordinary. Her friends 
are quite decent people, but life has sucked them dry 
. . . drunkenness and dulled feelings. ... You know 
what I mean . . . And one day she says, T must go 
away, I must break with this life and go where it is 
bright and joyous!’ . . . But there are her husband and 
her friend . . . She is miserable . . . You see, Kolia, 
life has sucked them dry . . . She goes away. I do not 
say that she goes to any one else, there is no lover in 
the story; I make it all depend on atmosphere. . . . 
Afterwards the two men are discovered in a tavern 
drinking. . . . They swallow their tears with the brandy. 
. . . And the wind howls mournfully in the stone chim¬ 
ney like a funeral dirge ... it is sad .. . empty . . . 
dark. ...” 

[ 140 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


“Would you like to know my opinion ?” Nikolai Ivan- 
ovitch asked. 

“I should, indeed. Now if you were to say to me, 
‘Misha, you stop writing/ I would stop instantly/’ 

“Your play is remarkable. It is absolutely true to 
life.” Nikolai Ivanovitch shut his eyes and shook his 
head. “Yes, Misha, we didn’t appreciate our good 
fortune and now it is gone and you and I are sitting 
here drinking without hope, without any will . . . Your 
play has moved me very much. ...” 

The puffiness under the eyes of the resigned stage- 
lover trembled. He leant over and kissed Nikolai Ivan¬ 
ovitch, pressed his hand and refilled their glasses. They 
clinked, and then, resting his elbow on the table, the 
resigned stage-lover continued their heart to heart 
talk. 

“Kolia,” he said, looking at him fixedly, “did you 
know that I worshipped your wife?” 

“I had some such idea.” 

“I was miserable, but what could I do? You were 
my friend. Many a time had I run out of your house 
vowing never to enter it again . . . But I always came 
again and played my fool’s part. . . . But don’t you 
cast any blame on her, Kolia!” He compressed his lips 
grimly. 

“She treated me badly, Misha.” 

“Perhaps. . . . But we are all guilty before her. . . . 
There is one thing I could never understand about you, 
Kolia. How could you, while living with a woman like 
that—to my mind one should have talked to her on 
bended knee . . . How could you have mixed yourself 
up with that widow Chimiriasova? Forgive my asking, 
what made you do it?” 

“That is a complex question.” 


[ 141 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


“Hardly. I have seen the woman. She is just an 
ordinary hen.” 

“But it is all over and done with, Misha . . . Sophia 
Ivanovna Chimiriasova was just a kind-hearted woman. 
She gave me some moments of happiness and made no 
demands on me. At home everything was so high- 
browed and complicated. I hadn’t the moral courage 
for Ekaterina Dmitrievna. . . 

“Well, Kolia . . . We shall be returning to Peters¬ 
burg, Tuesdays will come round and I shall not have 
your house to go to after the show. . . . How do you 
think I shall live? Look here . . . Where is your 
wife?” 

“In Paris.” 

“Do you hear from her?” 

“No.” 

“Why don’t you go to Paris? Let us go together.” 

“It would be useless.” 

“Let us drink to her healt h, Ko lia.” 

“Let us.” ~ " 1 

There came into the pavilion Charodeyeva, the ac¬ 
tress, dressed in a transparent green dress and a large 
hat. She was as thin as a snake and had blue patches 
under her eyes. Her spine supported her badly, no 
doubt, judging by the way in which she writhed as 
she bowed. The editor of the aesthetic journal “The 
Chorus of Muses” rose to greet her. He took her arm 
and kissed it slowly in the bend of the elbow. 

“What an amazing woman!” Nikolai Ivanovitch said, 
barely opening his teeth. 

“Charodeyeva is simply carrion, Kolia. Why? Be¬ 
cause she lived three months with Bezsonov, she now 
goes about spouting decadent verses at concerts. Look 
at the size of her mouth. It reaches to her ears and 

[ 142 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


the veins stick out on her neck. She should have been 
swept off the stage, as I said long ago. . . 

For all that, when Charodeyeva, bobbing her hat to 
right and left, with a smile on her big mouth that ex¬ 
posed her pink teeth, drew near their table, the resigned 
stage-lover rose, and as though overcome, clapped his 
hands together and put them under his chin. He said: 

“Ninotchka, my dear, what a dress! I can’t, I really 
can’t ... I have been ordered a complete rest, my 
dear. ...” 

Charodeyeva took his bony hand from beneath his 
chin. She compressed her lips and screwed up her nose. 

‘And what was that chatter about me in the restau¬ 
rant last night?” 

“I, speak badly about you in a restaurant? Ni¬ 
notchka !” 

“That is just what you did.” 

“On my honour, some one has maligned me.” 

Charodeyeva, with a laugh, put the palm of her hand 
to his lips. 

“You know I can’t be angry with you long.” And in 
quite another tone, as though she were playing a part 
in some imaginary worldly play, she turned to Nikolai 
Ivanovitch. 

“I have just been past your rooms. Some relative of 
yours has arrived. A most charming creature.” 

Nikolai Ivanovitch gave a hasty glance at his friend. 
He took his unfinished cigar from his saucer and made 
a violent effort to finish it so that the whole of his 
beard was enveloped in smoke. 

“I wasn’t expecting any one,” he said. “I wonder 
what it can mean. I must run.” He threw the end 
of his cigar into the sea and ran down the steps, flour¬ 
ishing his silver-topped cane and shoving his hat to the 

[ 143 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


back of his head. But Nikolai Ivanovitch did not 
reach the hotel in a breathless condition. 

“Dasha, what made you come? Has anything hap¬ 
pened?” he asked, shutting the door behind him. Dasha 
was sitting on the floor by an open trunk, mending a 
stocking. When her brother-in-law came in, she got up 
slowly, offered her cheek to be kissed and said absently: 

“I am glad to see you. Father and I have decided that 
you ought to go to Paris. I have brought two letters 
from Katia. Here they are. Please read them.” 

Nikolai Ivanovitch snatched the letters and walked 
away to the window. As she dressed in the dressing- 
room Dasha heard him rustling the paper and sighing, 
then all was still. She listened. 

“Have you had lunch?” he asked. “If you are hun¬ 
gry you must come to the pavilion.” And Dasha thought, 
“He doesn’t love her at all now.” She thrust a cap 
on her head with both hands and decided to put off 
the talk about Paris until tomorrow. 

On the way to the pavilion Nikolai Ivanovitch was 
silent, staring at the ground, but when Dasha asked, 
“Do you bathe?” he raised his head quickly, brighten¬ 
ing, and began to tell her about a society that had been 
formed for the reform of bathing-dresses on hygienic 
lines. 

“Only think, in a month of bathing here the system 
absorbs more iodine than one can take internally. And 
besides, you absorb sun rays and warmth from the hot 
sand at the same time. It is not so bad for us men, for 
we wear only a broad belt, but you women cover al¬ 
most two-thirds of your bodies. We are going to re¬ 
form that. ... I am giving a lecture about it on Sun¬ 
day and we are also getting up a concert.” 

They were walking along by the water over the bright 

[ 144 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


yellow sand as soft as velvet, and flat shells worn away 
by the weaves. Some distance away, near a sandbank, 
against which a small wave had broken in seething 
foam, two girls in red caps floated on the water like 
buoys. 

“Two of our supporters,” Nikolai Ivanovitch said 
solemnly, while in Dasha a feeling of excitement and 
restlessness grew and grew. She felt that she must 
gather all her forces, that she must let herself go, that 
she must experience things or it would be forever too 
late. The feeling had taken possession of her from the 
moment she saw the black ship moving through the 
steppes. 

Dasha stopped and looked at the water. It washed 
against the sand and receded and the contact of the 
land and the sea was so joyous and infinite that Dasha 
thrust her hand into it. A small crab backed away, 
raising a cloud of sand as it disappeared into the 
depths. A wave washed over Dasha’s arm to the elbow. 

“You have changed, somehow,” Nikolai Ivanovitch 
remarked, half shutting his eyes. “I can’t say whether 
you are prettier or plainer or whether it isn’t time you 
were married.” 

Dasha gave him a curious look, almost squinting, and 
with her arm wet as it was, she walked into the pavilion, 
where the resigned stage-lover was waving his straw 
hat. 

Dasha ate chebureki and prostokvasha and drank 
champagne. The resigned stage-lover did his best to 
look after her. He was quite overcome now and again 
and muttered to himself, “Heavens, how pretty she is!” 
He brought up some youths—students at a dramatic 
studio—whom he introduced and who replied to all 
questions in whispers as though in the confessional. 

[ 145 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


Nikolai Ivanovitch was pleased and flattered at his 
“little Dasha’s’’ success. 

Dasha drank wine and laughed and ate what was 
placed before her and held, out her hand toi some to be 
kissed, but she kept looking at the rough sea, sparkling 
and blue. “This is happiness,” she thought, but she 
felt a desire to cry. 

After bathing and a walk they returned to the hotel 
for supper. Within it was brilliant and gay and full 
of smart clothes. The resigned stage-lover enlarged en¬ 
thusiastically on the subject of love. Nikolai Ivanovitch 
looked at Dasha, drank heavily and grew gloomy. And 
Dasha peeped through a parting in the curtains at the liq¬ 
uid flashes that kept coming and going without. ... At 
last she rose and went on the shore. A clear, round 
moon, like the moon pictured in the Scheherazade tales, 
hung low in the silver blue void over the scaly path 
across the sea. Dasha clasped her hands and cracked 
the joints of her fingers. 

When she heard the voice of Nikolai Ivanovitch she 
walked away hastily by the water, which lapped gently 
against the shore. On the sand were a figure of a 
woman and the figure of a man lying with his head on her 
lap. Further along, among the quivering flashes, a 
human head bobbed about in the deep purple water, 
and eyes with the moon reflected in them stared at 
Dasha and followed her. Still further on a grey-haired 
man was lying on his side, supported on his elbow. 
Then a couple stood close together and as Dasha passed 
them, she heard a sigh and a kiss. 

Some one called in the distance “Dasha! Dasha!” at 
which Dasha dropped on the sand. She put her elbow 
on her kneel and rested her chin on her fist. Had Tel- 
iegin come up then and sat down beside her and put his 

[ 146 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


arm around her waist and asked softly and seriously, 
“Mine?” she would have answered “Yours.” 

A grey figure lying flat behind a sand hill, stirred, 
sat up and with lowered head gazed for a long time at 
the dancing moonlit path, then it rose and walked past 
Dasha,, dejected and lifeless. With an awful thump¬ 
ing of the heart, Dasha recognized Bezsonov. 

Thus there began for Dasha the remaining days of 
the old world. 

Not many of them were left, glad and carefree days, 
laden with the sultry heat of a burning summer. But 
people who are accustomed to think that tomorrow will 
rise as clear as the blue outline of mountains where a 
party of merry picnickers were going on mules, could 
not foresee, even the wisest and most sagacious of them, 
what lay at the moment outside their lives. But above 
the moment of high colours and satiating perfumes, a 
moment that was throbbing with all the founts of life, 
there hung a dead and impenetrable darkness. . . . Not 
by a hair or a glance or sensation or thought did any 
one realize what was in preparation; there was only, 
perhaps, that indefinable feeling that animals have be¬ 
fore a storm. It was a feeling of inexplicable restless¬ 
ness. People were feverish for life. While over the 
earth there descended a cloud, which whirled madly 
and furiously into a drooping, sinking mass. And this 
was visible by a shadow line from the southeast to the 
northwest which underlined the iniquitous old life on 
earth. 


[ 147 ] 


XIII 


During these hot days when the holiday-making pop¬ 
ulation throughout the old world were drowning their 
boredom in sea bathing, dancing, yachting and love-mak¬ 
ing, when the more numerous working population were 
busy creating the milliards of precious things which no 
one now wanted, when the rural population—the peasants 
—whom every one passed over and who were not taken 
into account in any sociological problem—were gathering 
in the harvest, several wise and cunning diplomatists were 
at that time carrying on conversations by code. The 
reason of these conversations was the alleged wish of 
the government of one of the great powers to have war 
at any cost, but which government it was, could not 
be ascertained, for all maintained a stout denial, while 
the fumes of a burning powder fuse could already be 
felt. 

One had only to find the end of the fuse, it seemed, 
and the explosion would be averted; it was the more 
astonishing that it was not found. To all impressions 
the wicked desire emanated from the German Emperor, 
but his diplomatists maintained with a clear conscience 
that it was Russia who wanted war at all costs and that 
the Russian minister for foreign affairs had done his 
utmost to prevent a possible ultimatum, and so on and 
so on. The cause of the obscurity lay chiefly in the fact 
that the peoples of at least four great powers desired 
war, not the war we have just been through, but war as 
a riddance from the hopeless accumulation of things. 

[ 148 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


For the half century of European peace, state machinery, 
military and despotic by nature, set itself the task not 
of increasing every man’s happiness, nor of develop¬ 
ing his spiritual side in love and good-will, but of mak¬ 
ing him produce the greatest number of things in the 
shortest possible time. These things were often un¬ 
wanted by those who made them, those who caused them 
to be made, and who acquired them. Man had to 
adapt himself to the incredibly complex universal fac¬ 
tory. He transferred himself into the part of a machine. 
He had to stifle his good desires and to suppress his 
vivid feelings; otherwise he would have gone under in 
the role to which he had been assigned. And these 
feelings and desires became primitive and vicious, and 
even the few who reaped the harvest on this field of 
work, became the slaves of things and figures more so 
than any one else. Thus the new barbarisms, with tri¬ 
umphant song, brought in the nineteenth century and 
callously and clamorously crossed the bounds of 
reason and drank greedily of the wine of life, cunningly 
served up, and grew intoxicated and erected the sacri¬ 
ficial altar and brought up their own brothers and 
cursed them. And when that mad formula “I am I” 
was pronounced, the circle was locked and ruin began. 
“I” disappeared like a fog, and nothing remained but 
abstraction. And then things appeared. And things 
became all. 

This human degradation was more marked in Ger¬ 
many than anywhere else. The mass of created things 
there was incredible. People panted under this load of 
civilization, and it seemed that if the country were 
not unloaded, the people would perish. 

In war there was a double joy, it meant the destruc¬ 
tion of things and the escape from the numbered pigeon- 

[ 149 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


f 


hole into the free fields. War was psychologically de¬ 
sired and therefore unavoidable. 

It is only in this way that one can explain the ease 
with which European governments embarked upon mil¬ 
itary operations and the speed with which mobilization 
was carried out everywhere. 

Yet during those last days no one knew or suspected 
anything. Life was orderly, safe and abundant. Mil¬ 
lions of people were oppressed—some felt that life was 
as meaningless as a prison wheel, others that life was 
vulgar and disgusting like a painted woman who bothers 
you in the street. 

This condition of having one’s teeth on edge did not 
escape Bezsonov, who lay for days at a time by the 
sea. He peered into faces—the laughing, tanned faces 
of women with the sun on them, the burnished copper, 
excited faces of men, and he felt, in dejection, that his 
heart lay within him like ice. When he looked at the 
sea, he reflected that for thousands of years the waves 
had broken against the shore. And the shore, too, was 
empty at one time, and now it was full of people, who 
would die some day and the shore would be empty again. 
But still the sea would be dashing on the sand. He 
frowned and shoved his dead cigarette into a shell. 
Then he bathed. Afterwards he dined lazily. Then 
he went to bed. 

Yesterday a girl had sat down near him on the sand 
and looked for a long time at the moonlight. A faint 
smell of violets was wafted towards him. A recollec¬ 
tion stirred in his torpid brain. Bezsonov turned, but 
thought, “No, you won’t catch hold of that hook, you’d 
better go to bed,” and he got up and went to his hotel. 

After this meeting Dasha grew nervous. She had 
thought that the Petersburg life, stifling and sleepless, 

[ 150 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


and all the stormy nights, had gone forever, and Bez- 
sonov, who for some unknown reason had kindled her 
imagination, was completely forgotten. 

But at a single glance in the moment when his dark 
silhouette crossed the moonlight there sprang up in her 
with renewed force, not a something vague and indef¬ 
inite, but a fierce desire, burning as the sun at noonday. 
She longed to feel this man. Not to love him or to 
worry over him, but to feel him. 

Sitting near the window in her white room, bathed 
in moonlight, she kept on repeating in a feeble voice: 

“Oh, my God, my God, what does this mean?” 

At seven in the morning Dasha went down to the sea, 
undressed and got into the water to the knees. She 
looked round. The sea was a pale blue and only in 
the distance was it covered with ripples. The bottom 
was visible and the water kept rising gently above the 
knees and falling lower. Dasha stretched out her hands 
and plunged into the delightful coolness and swam away. 
Then, refreshed and covered with the salt water, she 
wrapped herself in a rough dressing-gown and lay down 
on the sand, which was already warm from the sun. 

“I love only Ivan Ilyitch,” she thought as she lay with 
her head on her elbow, rosy and fresh. “I love, I love 
Ivan Ilyitch. God be thanked that I love Ivan Ilyitch. 
I feel clean and fresh and glad when I am with him. 
I shall marry him.” 

She shut her eyes and fell asleep, conscious of the 
motion of the sea near by and how its breathing kept 
in measure with her own. 

It was a great sleep. She could feel her body lying 
lightly on the warm sand. Asleep, she loved herself 
with a curiously agitated love. At sunset, when the flat 
disc of the sun descended into the cloudless orange glow, 

[ 151 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


Dasha met Bezsonov. He was sitting on a stone on a 
winding path that led through a flat field of wormwood. 
Dasha had wandered there in her walk, but as she caught 
sight of Bezsonov, she wanted to turn and run; but the 
former lightness had left her; her legs grew heavy and 
seemed rooted to the spot. She looked up and watched 
him approach her, in a manner that scarcely showed 
surprise at the meeting. He raised his straw hat and 
bowed humbly like a monk. 

“I was not mistaken, Daria Dmitrievna, it was you 
whom I saw on the front last night?” 

“Yes.” 

He was silent and lowered his eyes, then he looked 
past Dasha at the darkening steppes and said: 

“At the hour of sunset you might be in the desert 
on this field. About you there is nothing but worm¬ 
wood and stones. When it begins to get dark, you feel 
that there is no one left on earth but yourself.” 

Bezsonov laughed, slowly exposing his white teeth. 
Dasha gave him a furtive look, like a bird, then she 
walked by his side along the path. On either side and 
over the whole field were low-growing bushes of bitter¬ 
smelling wormwood. Each bush cast a pale shadow 
on the ground, for the moon was not yet bright. Two 
bats circled above their heads, showing clearly against 
the streak of sunset. 

“Seduction, seduction, you cannot get away with it,” 
Bezsonov observed; “it lures and entices you and again 
you fall into illusion. Look, how beautifully that is 
fashioned,” he pointed with his cane to the disc of 
the moon. “Throughout the night it will weave its web 
and this path will turn into a brook and every bush will 
be alive; even a corpse will seem beautiful and a woman’s 
face mysterious. And perhaps, it is all as it should be. 

[ 152 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


Wisdom itself may lie in this illusion . . .You are for¬ 
tunate, Daria Dmitrievna, very fortunate. . . .” 

“But why illusion? I do not think it illusion. It is 
simply the moon shining,” Dasha said stubbornly. 

“Certainly, Daria Dmitrievna, certainly . . . ‘Be as 
children . . .* The illusion lies in that I have no faith 
in any of this. ‘Be as the snakes. . . .’ How would 
you reconcile these opposite points of view? What is 
needed? They say love reconciles. What do you 
think?” 

“I don’t know; I don’t think anything.” 

“From what lands does she hail? How shall I lure 
her? With what words adjure her? Shall I grovel in 
the dust and cry: ‘Oh, God, give me love!’?” 

He laughed softly, showing his teeth. 

“I don’t want to go any further,” Dasha said. “I want 
to be by the sea.” 

They turned and now walked through the wormwood 
on a sandy rise. Suddenly, Bezsonov began, in a soft, 
cautious voice: 

“I remember every word you said in my house in 
Petersburg. I scared you. And yet you came like a bird 
with glad tidings.” 

Dasha was silent. She stared straight before her and 
walked quickly. 

“But I knew, somehow, that we should one day con¬ 
tinue our talk. I remember one keen sensation. ... It 
was not your special beauty that struck me, it was the 
wonderful music of your voice. Once—it was a long 
time ago—I heard an orchestra play a symphony, I for¬ 
get whose it was, and from all the volume of sound, one 
sound emerged, the clear, sad note of a cornet, and it 
seemed that it must be heard in every corner of the earth. 
Such will be the voice of the archangel in the last hour.” 

[ 153 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


“Heaven knows what you are talking about!” Dasha 
exclaimed. She stopped and looked at him, then walked 
on again. 

“A more terrible trial I have never had in my life. I 
looked at you then, thinking, ‘This is holy ground.’ Here¬ 
in lies my salvation; to give you my heart, to become a 
humble beggar, to melt in your light. ... Or perhaps, 
to take your heart and become infinitely rich? Only 
think, Daria Dmitrievna, you have come and I must solve 
the riddle.” 

Dasha got ahead of him, running over a sand dune. 
The broad path of moonlight, shimmering like scales on 
the heavy water, was cut short at the edge of the sea in 
a long, clear line, and over this light there hung a sombre 
radiance. Dasha’s heart beat so fast that she shut her 
eyes. 

“Oh God, save me from him!” she thought. Bez- 
sonov stuck his stick into the sand several times. 

“But we must decide, Daria Dmitrievna. . . . Some 
one must be consumed on this fire . . . Whether you or 
I ? . . . Reflect and answer me. ...” 

“I don’t understand,” Dasha said abruptly. 

“When you are a beggar, wasted and consumed, Daria 
Dmitrievna, then will your life really begin. Without 
the moonlight the temptation would not be worth three 
kopecks. It will be a life of terrible wisdom and a feel¬ 
ing of pride, immeasurably great. And all that is needed 
is to cast aside the cloak of maidenhood. ...” 

With an icy hand Bezsonov took Dasha’s and looked 
into her eyes. All that Dasha could do was to close 
hers slowly. A long silence ensued, after which he said: 

“However, we had better be going home to our beds. 
We have talked and weighed the question from all sides, 
and the hour is getting late.” 

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He walked with Dasha to her hotel, took leave of her 
politely, shoved his hat at the back of his head and 
walked along by the sea, peering at the indistinct forms 
of the passers-by. Bezsonov stopped and turned; he 
went up to a tall woman in a white silk shawl, who was 
standing motionless. Bezsonov flourished his stick and 
said: 

“Good evening, Nina.” 

“Good evening.” 

“What are you doing here?” 

“Just standing.” 

“Why are you alone?” 

“I am alone because I am alone,” Charodeyeva said 
quietly and angrily. 

“Are you still angry with me?” 

“No, my dear, I have long been reconciled. Don't 
you worry about me.” 

“Nina, come to me.” 

At this she threw back her head and was silent for 
some time; then she said in a trembling voice : 

“Have you gone mad ?” 

“Didn’t you know that?” 

He took her arm, but she pulled it sharply away and 
walked slowly beside him^ past the reflections of moon¬ 
light that crept along the oily-black water. 

In the morning Nikolai Ivanovitch woke Dasha by 
knocking gently on her door. 

“Dasha, get up, my dear; let us go and have coffee.” 

Dasha put her feet out of bed and looked at her scat¬ 
tered stockings and shoes, covered with grey dust. Some¬ 
thing must have happened. Was it that horrible dream 
again? No, it was worse than any dream. Dasha threw 
on her clothes and ran out to bathe. 

But the sea made her tired and the sun scorched her 

[ 155 ] 


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skin. As she sat wrapped in her rough dressing-gown, 
huddling her bare knees, she kept thinking that nothing 
good could happen in that place. 

“Stupid, a coward and an idler. An imagination that 
exaggerates everything. I don’t know myself what I 
want. One thing in the morning, another in the eve¬ 
ning. The type of person I most despise.” 

Dasha bent her head and looked at the sea. The tears 
came into her eyes, she was so perplexed and sad. 

“A wonderful pleasure is this shore. But who wants 
it? Nobody on earth. I don’t love any one really, and 
I hate myself. And it seems that he is right. It is better 
to burn everything, to be consumed and become sober. 
He asked me to go to him this evening; supposing I do 
and . . . Oh, no!” 

Dasha buried her face in her lap; it was so hot. 
Plainly, this dual existence could not go on. A deliver¬ 
ance must come at last from this condition of maiden¬ 
hood, no longer bearable. Or, let the worst happen. 

Sitting thus in dejection, she thought: 

“Supposing I go away from here, that I go back to 
Father and the dust and the flies, and the autumn will 
come and studies begin, and I shall work twelve hours 
a day. I shall get withered and ugly. I shall know in¬ 
ternational law by heart. Wear flannelette petticoats. 
The honourable lawyer, the spinster Bulavina. Very 
grand . . . Oh, my God, my God! ...” 

Dasha shook the sand from her skin and went into the 
house. Nikolai Ivanovitch was lying on the terrace in 
silk pajamas, reading a prohibited novel by Anatole 
France. Dasha sat down on the arm of his rocking- 
chair and swinging her slipper, she said, pensively: 

“We wanted to talk about Katia.” 

“Oh, yes.” 

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“You see, Nikolai, a woman’s life is very hard at 
times. At nineteen even, you don’t know what to do 
with yourself.” 

“At your age, Dasha, one should live without hesitat¬ 
ing. If you hesitate too much, you will be left in the 
lurch. Look at you now, you have grown awfully pretty 
of late.” 

“I knew it was useless talking to you, Nikolai. You 
always say the wrong thing and are so tactless. That 
is why Katia left you.” 

Nikolai Ivanovitch laughed. He laid his book on his 
stomach and put his fat hands at the back of his head. 

“When the rainy season begins the bird will fly home 
of itself. Do you remember how she used to clean her 
feathers? In spite of everything, I am very fond of 
Katia. Well, we have both sinned and are quits.” 

“So that is how you talk now! Had I been Katia I 
would have treated you just the same.” 

“Oh, this is something new, isn’t it?” 

“It is, indeed.” She now gave him a hostile look. 
“You love a man and worry yourself over him and don’t 
know what to do with yourself, while he is quite satisfied 
and confident. ...” 

She walked away to the balcony rails, angry, not so 
much with Nikolai Ivanovitch as with some one else. 

“When you are older you will see that it doesn’t do 
to take life’s reverses too much to heart. It is foolish and 
does you harm,” Nikolai Ivanovitch said. “However, that 
is the peculiar kink with you Bulavins, to make things 
more complicated than they are. You ought to be sim¬ 
pler, more natural.” 

He sighed and was silent, examining his finger-nails. 
A perspiring schoolboy rode past the terrace on a bicycle, 
bringing the post from the town. 


[ 157 ] 


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“I shall go to see the village school-teacher,” Dasha 
said miserably. 

“Whom?” Nikolai Ivanovitch asked. 

But Dasha did not reply and walked away to her own 
room. The post had brought her two letters, one from 
Katia and the other from her father. Dmitri Stepano- 
vitch wrote: 

“I am sending you a letter from Katia, which I have 
read and did not like at all. However, you had better 
do as you like. . . . Things are the same here. The 
weather is very hot. And yesterday Semion Semiono- 
vitch Goviadin was beaten by some hot-heads in the 
public park, but he does not say why. There is no other 
news. Oh, yes, a postcard came for you from a certain 
Teliegin, but I have lost it. I think he is also in the 
Crimea or somewhere. ...” 

Dasha carefully reread the last lines. Her heart be¬ 
gan to beat fast. She stamped her foot in rage. How de¬ 
lightful! “He is also in the Crimea or somewhere. . . .” 
Her father, to be sure, was impossible, slovenly and an 
egoist. She crumpled up his letter and sat for some time 
at the writing-table, her chin resting on her fist. Then 
she read the letter from Katia: 

“Do you remember, Dasha, my telling you about a 
man who followed me about? Last evening, when in the 
Luxembourg garden, he sat down beside me. I was 
frightened at first, but did not move. After a while he 
said to me: T have been following you. I know your 
name and who you are. But beyond that a great mis¬ 
fortune has happened to me. I am in love with you.’ I 
looked at him. He sat as though in church, his face sol¬ 
emn and severe and drawn, somehow. ‘You need not be 
afraid of me. I am an old man and lonely. I suffer 
from heart disease and may die at any moment. And 

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then, there is this misfortune.’ The tears rolled down 
his cheeks. Then he exclaimed, shaking his head, ‘What 
a sweet, beautiful face you have!’ I said, ‘Please don’t 
follow me any more,’ and wanted to go away, but I grew 
sorry for him and stopped to talk to him. He listened 
with eyes shut, nodding his head. And just think, Dasha, 
today I received a letter from some woman, I believe 
the concierge of the house in which he lived, and she 
writes, ‘on his instructions’ to inform me that he died 
in the night. . . . Isn’t it awful! I walked over to the 
window just now and looked at the thousands and thou¬ 
sands of lights in the street and the vehicles rolling past 
and the people strolling among the trees. It has been 
raining and there is a mist now. It seemed to me that 
everything I saw was of the past, that all the people were 
dead, done with. I do not see what is happening just 
now. I know that all is finished. A man came by and 
turned to look at my window, and though I am clearly 
conscious that he turned and looked at me, it seemed that 
it happened a long, long time ago. ... I must be very 
ill. I lie and cry sometimes over my wasted life. There 
used to be something—it may not have been real—but, at 
any rate, it was happiness, and then there were people one 
liked, but now nothing is left . . . and my heart has 
grown dry within me. I fed that some great sorrow is 
in store, a punishment for the bad way in which we lived. 
Dasha, my dear, God give you happiness. ...” 

Dasha showed the letter to Nikolai Ivanovitch. He 
sighed as he read it and began to tell her how he blamed 
himself about Katia. “I could see that we lived badly and 
that the incessant pleasure-seeking would end in despair. 
But what could I do when the main occupation of my life, 
and that of Katia’s and of all our friends, was enjoy¬ 
ment? When I look at the sea here sometimes, I can’t 

[ 159 ] 


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help reflecting that there is some Russia where they till 
the land and rear cattle and hew coal and weave and 
hammer and build, and that there are people who cause all 
these things to be done, and that we, some third party, 
the enlightened aristocracy of the country, the intellec¬ 
tuals, have no concern in any part of this Russia. It sup¬ 
ports us. We are butterflies. It’s a tragedy. Now, if 
I were to try to grow vegetables or to build a factory, 
nothing whatever would come of it. I am doomed to a 
butterfly existence to the end of my days. It is true that 
we write books and make speeches and politics, but this 
is also a pastime with us, even when conscience gnaws. 
This perpetual pleasure-seeking created spiritual havoc in 
Katia. Nothing else could have been expected. If only 
you knew what a sweet and charming woman she was! 
I have spoiled and corrupted her.) . . .You are right, 
I ought to go to her. ...” 

It was decided that they should go to Paris together, 
as soon as they could get foreign passports. After dinner 
Nikolai Ivanovitch went into the town and Dasha be¬ 
gan to alter a large straw hat for the journey, but she 
only spoiled it and gave it to the housemaid. Then she 
wrote a letter to her father and at dusk she lay down 
on her bed, such a sudden feeling of tiredness had come 
over her. She put her hand under her cheek and lis¬ 
tened to the sound of the sea, which seemed more and 
more remote and pleasant. 

Then she felt some one bend over her, push away a 
lock of hair from her face and kiss her on the eyes, the 
cheeks, the comers of her mouth, a kiss as light as a 
breath. The sweetness of it coursed through the whole 
of her body. Dasha began to wake slowly. The stars 
could be seen through the open window and the breeze 
blowing in fluttered the pages of the letter. From behind 

[ 160 ] 


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the wall a human form emerged, leant its elbows on the 
window-sill and stared at Dasha. 

Dasha woke up wide. She sat up in bed and put her 
hand on her bosom, at her unfastened dress. 

“What do you want?” she asked in a scarcely audible 
voice. The man at the window spoke in Bezsonov’s 
voice. 

“I waited for you on the shore. Why didn’t you 
come? Were you afraid?” 

“Yes,” Dasha said, after a pause. 

Then he climbed in at the windov r , pushed away the 
table and came up to the bed. 

“I spent a horrible night,” he said; “a little more and 
I would have hanged myself. Have you no feeling for 
me ?” 

Dasha shook her head, but did not open her lips. 

“Listen, Daria Dmitrievna, this is bound to happen, 
whether today or tomorrow or a year hence. I cannot 
live without you. Do not make me lose all likeness to a 
human being.” He spoke softly, in a hoarse voice, and 
came quite close to Dasha. She sighed deeply and con¬ 
tinued to stare at his face. “Everything I said yesterday 
was a horrible lie. I suffer cruelly. I haven’t the 
strength to wipe out the memory of you . . . Will you 
be my wife? ...” 

He bent over Dasha, inhaling her perfume. He put 
his arms round her neck and fastened on her lips. Dasha 
tried to push him away, but her hands bent. Then, in 
her stupor, came the clear thought, “This is what I 
fear and wanted, but it’s like murder. . . .” She 
turned her face away ; she could hear Bezsonov, whose 
breath smelt of wine, muttering something in her ear. 
And Dasha thought, “I suppose he was the same with 
Katia.” A cold shiver ran over her body; the smell 

[ 161 ] 


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of wine grew stronger, the muttering more disgusting. 

“Let me go!” she said and with an effort, pushed 
Bezsonov away. She walked over to the door and man¬ 
aged to fasten her dress at the throat. 

Then a fury seized Bezsonov. He clutched Dasha’s 
hands, pulled her over to himself and began to kiss her 
throat. She fought silently with compressed lips. But 
when he lifted her off her feet and carried her, Dasha 
said in a hurried whisper: 

“Never in my life, not if you die!” 

She pushed him forcibly away. He dropped into a 
chair and sat motionless. Dasha rubbed the places on 
her hands where his finger-marks showed. 

“I ought not to have been in such a hurry,” Bezsonov 
said. 

“I find you disgusting,” Dasha replied. 

At this he leant the side of his head against the back 
of the chair. 

“You are mad ...” Dasha said. “Go away.” 

She repeated this several times. He understood at 
last, rose and climbed heavily and clumsily out of the 
window. Dasha closed the shutters and began to pace 
the dark room. The night was spent badly. 

Towards the morning Nikolai Ivanovitch slopped 
along with his bare feet and knocked at her door, asking 
in a sleepy voice: 

“Have you got a toothache, Dasha?” 

“No.” 

“Then what was that noise in your room in the night?” 

“I don’t know.” 

“A funny thing,” he muttered, and went away. Dasha 
could neither sit nor lie down. She could only pace the 
room from window to door, trying to drown that acute 
feeling of disgust with herself that gnawed like a tooth- 

[ 162 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


ache. There had happened a most horrible thing; some¬ 
thing that had never been foreseen. It was as if a dog 
had torn a corpse in the churchyard at night. . . . And 
she—Dasha—had done this. Had Bezsonov possessed 
her, she would not have felt it so badly, it seemed. With 
a pang of despair she recalled the white, sun-bathed ship 
and another thing, the deserted lover in the copse, who 
cooed and muttered and lied when he assured Dasha 
that she was in love. 

So it had all ended in this. Dasha felt, as she looked 
at the bed, gleaming white in the dimness, and saw the 
spot where but now a human face had assumed the like¬ 
ness of a dog, that she could not live with the con¬ 
sciousness of it. Any kind of suffering would have 
been more bearable than this loathing of everything, of 
people, of the earth, of herself. . . . She covered her 
face with her hands and thought, “Oh, Father, if Thou 
art in heaven, save me.” . . . But the words had no 
power to reach Him. . . . Her face was burning; she 
wanted to tear the web from her neck, from her body. 

At last the clear daylight peeped through the closed 
shutters. A sound of banging doors was heard in the 
house and some loud voice, calling, “Matriosha, bring 
me some water.” . . . Dasha sluiced her face, thrust a 
cap over her eyes and went out on to the shore. The 
sea was like milk, the sand was damp. There was a 
smell of seaweed. Dasha turned to the fields and wan¬ 
dered down the road. Coming towards her was a rustic 
cart, drawn by one horse, which raised a cloud of dust. 
A Tartar sat on the box and beside him was a broad- 
shouldered man dressed completely in white. She looked 
at him as if in a dream (her eyes stuck together from 
the sun and weariness) and thought: “There goes a 
nice, happy man. Well, let him, nice and happy as he 

[ 163 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


is.” And she stepped off the road. Suddenly a fright¬ 
ened voice called from the cart: 

“Daria Dmitrievna!” 

Some one jumped from the cart and ran. At the 
sound of his voice Dasha’s heart leapt and fell some¬ 
where low down; her knees gave way under her. She 
turned. Teliegin ran up to her, sunburnt, excited and 
blue-eyed and so unexpectedly dear to her that Dasha 
impetuously put her hands on his breast, pressed her 
face against him and burst out crying, loudly, like a 
child. 

Teliegin held her firmly round the shoulders. When 
Dasha, in a broken voice, attempted to explain some¬ 
thing or other, he said: 

“Please, Daria Dmitrievna, not now. It isn’t im¬ 
portant.” . . . The front of his linen jacket was wet 
with Dasha’s tears. But Dasha felt relieved. 

“Were you coming to us?” she asked. 

“Yes. I was coming to say good-bye, Daria Dmitri¬ 
evna. I heard only yesterday that you were here and 
so ... I wanted to say good-bye.” 

“Good-bye ?” 

“I’ve been called up. It can’t be helped.” 

“Called up?” 

“Haven’t you heard?” 

“No.” 

“It’s war ; that’s what it is.” He smiled and looked 
into Dasha’s face with a new assurance. 


[ 164 ] 




XIV 


In the editor’s room of a big liberal newspaper—“The 
Word of the People”—an extraordinary editorial meet¬ 
ing was in progress, and as alcoholic drinks were for¬ 
bidden by law yesterday, in addition to the editorial 
tea, brandy and rum were served. Stout, bearded lib¬ 
erals were sitting in deep armchairs, smoking tobacco 
and feeling lost. The young members of the staff were 
seated on window-sills and on the famous leather-cov¬ 
ered sofa about which a celebrated writer had let drop 
the inadvertent remark that it contained bugs. 

The editor, grey-haired and red-cheeked, a man of 
English habits, was pronouncing in a deliberate voice, 
word by word, one of his remarkable speeches that 
would give the lead to the whole of the liberal press. 

“The complexity of our problems lies in the fact that 
while not receding one step from our opposition to the 
Tsar’s government, in the face of the danger threaten¬ 
ing the integrity of Russian territory, we must hold out 
our hand to that government. Our gesture must be 
honest and sincere. The question of the guilt of the 
Tsar’s government, which has brought Russia to the 
point of war, is, at the moment, one of secondary con¬ 
sideration. We must conquer first and then judge the 
guilty. Today, at this very hour, a bloody battle is in 
progress at Krasnostaw. Our guards have been thrown 
into the broken front. The result of the battle is not 
known as yet, but we must remember that Kiev is 
threatened. The war cannot last more than two or 

[ 165 ] 


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three months at most and no matter what its issue, with 
our heads held high, we shall be able to say to the Tsar’s 
government, Tn a difficult hour we were beside you, now 
we must hold you to account.’ ...” 

One of the oldest members of the staff, a man named 
Belosvetov, who wrote about Zemstvo matters, unable 
to contain himself any longer, exclaimed: 

“If it is the Tsar’s government that’s at war, why the 
extended hand? For the life of me I don’t understand.” 

“Well,, really, to extend a hand to Nicholas II., say 
what you will, gentlemen, but it goes against the grain,” 
muttered Alfa, a leader writer, as he selected a cake 
from the dish. “It makes one break into a cold sweat 
even in sleep.” 

Instantly several voices broke out. 

“No, on no condition can we enter into agree¬ 
ment. ...” 

“Is this capitulation, I ask?” 

“An ignominious end to the whole of our progres¬ 
sive movement.” 

“But gentlemen, I would like some one to explain to 
me the aims of the war.” 

“You will know them when the Germans break your 
neck.” 

“So, sir, it seems you are a Nationalist!” 

“I merely don’t wish to be beaten.” 

“It is not we who will be beaten, but Nicholas II.” 

“But what about Poland and Volhynia and Kiev?” 

“The more completely we are beaten the sooner will 
the revolution come.” 

“For no revolution in the world would I give up 
Kiev. . . 

“For shame, Peter Petrovitch. ...” 

Order was restored with difficulty. The editor went 

[ 166 ] 


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on to explain that according to a circular on the military 
position the censorship would suppress any newspaper 
that made the slightest attack on the government and 
that there would thus be destroyed the beginning of 
the freedom of the press, for the attainment of which 
so much energy had been spent. 

“It is for this reason that I would suggest to this 
worthy assembly the advisability of finding a more ad¬ 
missible standpoint. For myself, I will express the 
paradoxical view that we must accept this war completely 
with all its consequences. Do not forget that the war is 
popular in our society. In Moscow it has been termed 
the second war of the Fatherland.” He smiled subtly 
and lowered his eyes. “The Emperor was received in 
Moscow almost with enthusiasm. Mobilization among 
the common people is proceeding in a way which they 
dared not and could not have expected.” 

“Vasili Vasilevitch, are you joking, pray?” exclaimed 
Belosvetov in a plaintive voice. “You are making the 
foundations of our faith tumble about us like a house 
of cards. We to help the government? And what of the 
ten thousand of our best people rotting in Siberia? And 
the shooting of workmen? The stones are still wet with 
their blood. ...” 

The opinions expressed were all excellent and most 
worthy, but each could see clearly that an agreement 
with the government would have to be reached, and so, 
when the proofs of a leader were brought from the 
printers, beginning with the words, “In the face of the 
German invasion we must close our ranks in a single 
front,” the assembly silently examined the slips. Some 
one gave a smothered sigh, another remarked: “So this 
is what we have come to!” Belosvetov fastened every 
button on his black coat covered with cigarette ash, 

[ 167 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


but he did not go away; he sat down again in his armchair 
and the next issue of the paper was made up with the 
headline, “The Country Is in Danger. To Arms!” 

For all that the heart of every one was full of con¬ 
fusion and alarm. How the firm peace of Europe had 
come to be blown into the air within twenty-four hours 
and why the benevolent European civilization, which 
“The Word of the People” had daily cast into the gov¬ 
ernment’s teeth and by means of which it had aroused 
the consciences of public organizations, had been so com¬ 
pletely wrong (printing and electricity and even radium 
had been imaginary then, and when the hour came, be¬ 
neath the frock-coat and top hat was the hairy savage 
with a club), the editorial staff could not fathom; it was 
too bitter to have to acknowledge it. 

Silently and sadly the conference broke up. Vener¬ 
able writers retired to the Club for luncheon and the 
younger men gathered in the room of the news editor. 
It was resolved to make a most minute investigation of 
the moods of the most varied sections and societies. 
Antoshka Arnoldov was entrusted to deal with the mil¬ 
itary censorship. With a hot hand he took an advance 
on his pay and set out on a fast horse along the Nevsky 
to the General Staff. 

He was received by the head of the press section, a 
colonel of the general staff, Solntsev by name, who lis¬ 
tened to him politely and looked him in the eyes with 
his own clear, protruding and humorous eyes. Arnoldov 
had expected to meet some wonder hero, a purple-faced 
leonine general, a scourge of a free press, but before him 
sat an elegant, rosy-cheeked, educated man, who had no 
intention of scourging or oppressing and who did not 
shout in a hoarse bass voice. It fitted in badly with his 
general conception of a hireling of the Tsar. 

[ 168 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 

“Well, Colonel, I hope you will not withhold your 
authoritative views on the questions I have noted.” Ar- 
noldov gave a sidelong glance at the sombre, life-size 
portrait of the Emperor Nicholas I., who stared with in¬ 
exorable eyes at the representative of the press, as much 
as to say: “A short, miserable jacket, brown shoes, a per¬ 
spiring nose, a wretched appearance. You are afraid. 
...” “I do not doubt, Colonel, that by the New Year 
Russian troops will be in Berlin, but our paper is chiefly 
interested in certain special matters. ...” 

Colonel Solntsev politely interrupted him. 

“To my mind, Russian society has not clearly ap¬ 
prehended the immensities of this war, nor the conse¬ 
quences that must follow it. Of course, I cannot but 
welcome your excellent desire that our glorious troops 
should be in Berlin, but I fear that it will be more dif¬ 
ficult to accomplish it than to wish it. I would suggest 
that the most important function of the press at the 
present moment is to prepare society for the very serious 
danger that is threatening our realm and for the extraor¬ 
dinary sacrifices that we shall have to make if we are 
to escape from the undesired consequences of an enemy 
invasion into Russian boundaries.” 

Antoshka Arnoldov dropped his notebook and looked 
in perplexity at the colonel. Behind him rose up the 
sombre form of Nicholas I. Both men had the same 
kind of eyes, but the latter’s were cruel, while the eyes 
of the colonel were good-humoured. The large room 
was clean, severe and monumental and smelt of the 
centuries. Solntsev continued. 

“We did not seek this war and at present we are 
merely on the defensive. Germany has the advantage 
over us in artillery, in the thick network of foreign rail¬ 
ways and consequently in the speed with which she can 

[ 169 ] 


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move troops. Nevertheless, we will do our utmost to 
prevent the enemy from crossing our frontiers. Rus¬ 
sian troops will carry out the heavy duty that has been 
laid upon them. Society must have faith in the high 
authorities and in the army. It would be desirable that 
society should also be inculcated with a feeling of duty 
to the country.” Colonel Solntsev raised his eyebrows 
and drew a square on a sheet of paper that lay before 
him. “I realize that the feeling of patriotism among 
certain sections of the community is somewhat compli¬ 
cated. But the danger is so great that I am convinced 
that all disagreements and accounts will be put off until 
a more propitious moment. The All-Russian empire, 
even in 1812, has never been through a harder time. This 
is about all that I would like you to emphasize. Then, 
it must also be made public that the military hospitals 
at the disposal of the government are insufficient to ac¬ 
commodate the many wounded and that in this respect, 
society must be prepared for extensive help. ...” 

“I am sorry, Colonel, but I do not understand; what 
can be the number of wounded?” 

Solntsev again raised his eyebrows and drew a circle 
inside the square. 

“I think that in the next weeks we may expect 
about one thousand two hundred and fifty or three 
hundred.” 

Antoshka jArnoldov swallowed his saliva, jotted down 
the figures and asked with a new respect: 

“How many killed do you expect in that case?” 

“We usually reckon about ten per cent of the 
wounded.” 

“Oh, thank you.” 

Solntsev rose. Antoshka shook him hastily by the 
hand. He opened the oak door and collided with Atlant, a 

[ 170 ] 


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consumptive and shabby journalist, in a crushed jacket, 
who had not had any vodka since yesterday. 

“Colonel, I have come about the war,” said Atlant, 
covering his dirty shirt-front with his hand. 

“You are welcome.” 

Arnoldov came out into the square, put on his hat 
and stood for some time with half closed eyes. “War 
till victory,” he muttered through clenched teeth. “Just 
wait, you old galoshes, we will teach you to talk about 
defeat.” 

About the big, cleanly-swept square with its dirty 
granite column of Alexander, small groups of bearded, 
bewildered peasants moved to and fro. Shouts of com¬ 
mand were heard. The peasants arranged themselves, 
ran across and formed into line. In one spot, some 
fifty of them shouted discordantly “Hurrah” as they 
rose from the pavement and set off at a stumbling trot. 
. . . “Stop! Attention! You rascals, you dogs!” some 
hoarse voice shouted at them. In another spot they 
were standing in a circle, and some one was saying, 
“When you run up, stick him through the body; if 
your bayonet is broken, strike him with the butt end.” 

They were the same rugged peasants with halos of 
beards, in best shoes and shirts and with the salt on 
their spades who, two hundred years ago, had come to 
that swampy shore to build a city. Now, they had been 
summoned to stay with their shoulders the tottering pil¬ 
lar of the Empire. 

Antoshka turned down the Nevsky, thinking all the 
while of his article. In the middle, marching to the 
sound of a flute moaning like the wind, came two com¬ 
panies in full marching uniform, with kit bags and ket¬ 
tles and shovels. The high cheek-boned faces of the 
soldiers were weary and covered with dust. A little 

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officer in a green shirt with new straps raised himself 
on tiptoe now and again and turning, rolled his eyes. 
“Right! Right!” As in a dream came the roar of the 
smart, sparkling carriages on the Nevsky. “Right! 
Right! Right!” Swaying in measure behind the little 
officer, they walked to death, these submissive, heavy- 
footed peasants. A black, fiery horse caught up with 
them, foaming at the mouth. A broad-backed coachman 
reined him in. A beautiful lady rose in the carriage and 
looked at [the passing soldiers. Suddenly her white- 
gloved hand began to make the sign of the cross over 
them and the tears rolled down her cheeks. 

The soldiers passed, screened from view by a stream 
of carriages. It was crowded and hot on the pavement; 
every one seemed to be expecting something. Passers-by 
stopped, listened to the talk and shouting, pushed their 
way through, asked questions, and then, in excitement, 
went to join another group. All over the place there 
was a whirlpool of people. A crush began; people 
crossed the street. 

The disorderly movement gradually became defined; 
people were turning from the Nevsky to the Morskaya. 
There the crowd walked frankly in the middle of the 
street. Some short fellows ran past, in silent concentra¬ 
tion. At the crossways there was a waving of hats and 
umbrellas and a shout of “Hurrah! Hurrah!” filled the 
Morskaya. Street boys whistled shrilly. Smart women 
stood up in their carriages. The crowd poured into the 
Isaac Square and began to climb the railings. Win¬ 
dows and roofs were filled with people. Heads swarmed 
beneath the Isaac columns like ants. And these tens of 
thousands of people were all straining to the top win¬ 
dows of a dull red, heavy house—the German embassy— 
from whence clouds of smoke issued. Behind broken 

[ 172 ] 


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windows people flitted about, casting to the crowd 
bundles of papers, which flew up in the air and fell 
slowly. At each volume of smoke and each thing thrown 
from the windows the crowd roared. At the front of 
the house were two bronze giants holding horses by the 
bridle. The busy little fellows appeared about them. 
The crowd grew quiet; a metallic striking of hammers 
could be heard. The giant to the right swayed and fell on 
the pavement. The crowd yelled. The crush began. 
People rushed up from everywhere. “Into the Moika 
with them! Into the Moika, the devils!” The second 
statue fell. Antoshka Arnoldov was seized by the shoul¬ 
ders by some stout lady in glasses, who shouted at him, 
“We’ll drown them all, young man!” The crowd surged 
towards the Moika. The sound of firemen’s horns could 
be heard; brass helmets gleamed in the distance. From 
the corners mounted police appeared. And suddenly, 
among the rushing, shrieking crowd Arnoldov caught 
sight of the horribly pale face of a man without a hat, 
who was staring with glassy eyes, wide-open and motion¬ 
less. It was only by the hair and the eyebrows, that 
seemed drawn on the face, that he recognized Bezsonov. 
He approached him. 

“Have you been there?” Bezsonov asked. “I heard 
them kill him.” 

“Has there been murder? Who has been killed?” 

“I don’t know.” 

Bezsonov turned away and staggered down the square 
as one blind, his hands thrust in his pockets. The re¬ 
maining crowd rushed in separate groups to the Nevsky, 
where a pogrom had begun on Reiter’s cafe. 

That evening Antoshka Arnoldov, standing at the 
desk of one of the editorial rooms, which was filled with 
tobacco smoke, wrote rapidly on narrow slips of paper. 

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“Today we have witnessed all the force and beauty of 
the national anger. We must observe that not a single 
bottle of wine was drunk in the cellar of the German 
embassy. Everything was broken and cast into the 
Moika. Reconciliation is impossible. We must fight 
until we achieve victory, no matter what the sacrifices 
may be. The Germans expected to find Russia asleep, 
but at the thundering words ‘The Country is in danger!’ 
the people have risen as one man. Their anger is ter¬ 
rific. The Country is a mighty word, but one which we 
have forgotten. The first boom of a German gun has 
made it come to life in all its virgin beauty and in fiery 
letters it shines in the heart of each of us. . . 

Antoshka frowned; a sensation of pins and needles 
went down his back. What words to write! Not as it 
was a fortnight ago, when he was told to make a sur¬ 
vey of summer entertainments. He recalled how at the 
Bouffe a man had come on the stage, got up like a pig 
and had sung, “A pigling am I and not ashamed, a pig¬ 
ling am I and proud to be so named. My mother was 
a sow and I am like her, somehow. ...” 

“We are entering an heroic era. For too long have 
we been rotting alive. War is our purification. Fire, 
blood and victory!” Thus wrote Antoshka, spluttering 
his pen. 

Notwithstanding the opposition on the part of the 
defeatists, led by Belosvetov, Arnoldov’s article was 
printed, with the concession to the former of having it 
placed on the third page under the pedantic headline “In 
War Time.” Soon letters from readers began to arrive 
at the office, some expressing themselves with enthusiasm 
about the article, others with bitter irony. But the 
former were by far the more numerous. Antoshka’s 
pay was increased and within a week he was summoned 

[ 174 ] 


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to the chief editor’s room, where grey-haired, red-faced 
Vasili Vasilevitch, who smelt of English eau-de-Cologne, 
offered Antoshka an armchair and said: 

“You must go into the country.’’ 

“Yes, sir.” 

“We ought to know what the peasants think and say. 
It is expected of us.” The palm of his hand came down 
on a pile of letters. “The intellectuals have been aroused 
to a great interest in the country. We must give them 
a vivid, direct impression of this sphinx.” 

“The results Oof mobilization have shown a great 
patriotic outburst, Vasili Vasilevitch.” 

“I know. But how the devil did they come by it? 
You can go where you please, but keep your ears open 
and ask questions. By Saturday I shall expect five hun¬ 
dred words from you on your impressions of the coun¬ 
try.” 

From the office Antoshka went to the Nevsky, where 
he bought a travelling suit of a military cut, brown 
leggings and a flask; then he had luncheon at Albert’s 
and came to the conclusion that the best thing to do was 
to go to Khlibi, where Elisaveta Kievna was spending 
the summer with her brother Kie. In the evening he 
booked a place on the international train. 

The village of Khlibi consisted of some fifty yards, 
overgrown with gooseberry bushes, vegetables and old 
lime trees, growing in the middle of the road. The large 
school building, which was once the squire’s house, stood 
on a hillock. The village lay in a valley, between a 
swamp and the river Svinukha and was thickly over¬ 
grown with nettles and burdock. The village lands were 
not large, the soil was poor, and the peasants nearly all 
went into Moscow to work at some trade. 

Towards the evening, when Arnoldov drove into the 

[ 175 ] 


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village on a rustic cart, he was amazed at the stillness 
thereof. Only a stupid hen cackled as it rushed out 
from beneath the horse’s feet and an ancient dog barked 
in a shed, and somewhere along the river, there was a 
sound of felling, and two rams were butting at each 
other in the middle of the road. 

Arnoldov climbed down by some stone gates, where 
some lions, with the plaster peeling off them, stood in 
the middle of a lawn. He settled with the deaf old man, 
who had brought him from the station and walked up 
a path, whence, through the transparent green of the 
birches, he could see the white pillars of the school- 
house, tumbling down on one side. On the porch, sitting 
on a half rotten step, were the schoolmaster, Kie Kie- 
vitch, and Elisaveta Kievna, who were leisurely con¬ 
versing together. Long shadows from the tall willows 
fell on the meadow below. Starlings flew in dark clouds 
above. A horn sounded in the distance, calling together 
the flock. Several red cows came out of the rushes and 
one lifted its head and mooed. Kie Kievitch was very 
like his sister; he had the same kind of pencilled eyes, 
but they were not kindly; he wore spectacles and chewed 
a straw as he spoke. 

“Added to everything, Lisa, you are extraordinarily 
unversed in the sexual sphere. Types like you are the 
sickening outcasts of a bourgeois civilization. For rev¬ 
olutionary work you are utterly useless.” 

Elisaveta Kievna gazed with an indolent smile at the 
meadow, where the setting sun had turned the grass and 
the shadows golden. 

“I shall go to Africa,” she said. “Mind, Kie, I shall 
go to Africa. They have long been asking me to come.” 

“I don’t believe in it and consider it untimely and 
ridiculous to urge the Negroes to revolt.” 

[ 176 ] 


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“Well, we can judge of that there.” 

“The present European war is bound to end with the 
international proletariat taking into its own hands the 
initiative of the social revolution. We must be prepared 
for this and should not waste our energies on purely 
political work. The more so as it is all nonsense about 
the Negroes.” 

“It’s an awful bore to listen to you, Kie. You seem 
to have learnt everything by heart. All is plain as a 
book to you.” 

“Every person, Lisa, must try to put his ideas into some 
systematic order and not worry as to whether what he 
says is boring.” 

“Try then, and may it do you good.” 

Similar conversations took place between brother and 
sister every day, neither having anything to do. When 
Elisaveta Kievna wanted something sensational, she 
would say unfair things about the party to which Kie 
Kievitch belonged. He would frown and restrain him¬ 
self for a time, then he would burst out at his sister in a 
choking voice. She would listen to his reproaches, weep¬ 
ing silently and then go to bathe in the river. 

The evening was still. Motionless hung the green 
transparent branches of the drooping birches before the 
porch. The rasping of a crake was heard from the grass 
on the hill. Kie Kievitch was saying that it was time 
that Lisa settled down and devoted herself to some use¬ 
ful work. Lisa gazed with her short-sighted eyes at 
the swaying outlines of the trees in the orange sunset, 
thinking of how she would live among the liberated 
Negroes, alone and worshipped by them, and of how it 
would come to the ears of Ivan Ilyitch Teliegin and how 
he would come to her and say, “I never understood you, 
Lisa. You are a wonderfully fascinating woman.” 

[ 177 ] 


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At this moment Antoshka Arnoldov approached the 
porch and putting down his bag, said: 

“Here I am, Lisa. You didn’t expect me, did you? 
How do you do, my splendid woman?” He kissed her 
on the cheek. “In the first place, I want something to 
eat and then want lots of material. I must send a feu- 
illeton by Saturday. Is that your brother? He is the 
very man I want.” 

Antoshka sat down on the steps, stretched out his 
legs in brown gaiters and lighted a pipe. 

“Tell me, Kie Kievitch, what do they say and think 
about the war in this village of yours?” 

Kie Kievitch assumed a hurt and bored air, so that 
it should not by any chance be suspected that he could 
be impressed by any authorities, such as writers from 
the capital. He munched a straw and puckered the skin 
on his forehead. 

“To my mind,” he replied, “the war has been cyni¬ 
cally staged by international capitalists. Germany alone 
cannot be held to blame. The proletariat was compelled, 
for a time, at all events, to take its stand on the patriotic 
platform.” 

“I should like to know what the peasants themselves 
sav.” 

“The devil knows them. I attempted to explain to 
them the social and economic under-currents of the war, 
but what was the use? Such ignorance that it makes 
one despair of the class!” 

“Still, they must say something, I suppose.” 

“Go into the village and hear for yourself. It may be 
of some use for verses or stories.” 

Kie Kievitch was annoyed and ceased speaking. The 
setting sun sank into a long blue-purple cloud. The 
shadows cast by the willows in the meadow died out. 

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And in the mist, that rose gently in the river valley, 
the moaning and sighing of the sad voices of frogs 
spread and grew friendly. 

“We have wonderful frogs/’ Elisaveta Kievna re¬ 
marked. Kie Kievitch looked at her askance and 
shrugged his shoulders. The August stars were sprinkled 
over the sky, now cold. Below in Khlibi, it was damp 
and smelt of unsettled dust, raised by the flocks, and 
of new milk. At a yard, here and there, stood an un¬ 
harnessed cart. Under the limes, where it was quite 
dark, the wheel of a well squeaked, a horse neighed and 
drank, breathing hard. On an open space near a barn, 
which had a thatched roof like a nightcap, three girls 
were sitting on logs, singing softly. 

Elisaveta Kievna and Arnoldov came up and also sat 
down on a log near by. 

Khlibi our village 
Is adorned with all, 

Chairs and posies 

And pictures of girls. . . . 

the girls sang. The one at the end turned to the new¬ 
comers and said quietly: 

“Well, girls, shall we go to bed?” But they did not 
move. Some one was fidgeting about within the barn, 
then a door creaked and out came a short, bald-headed 
peasant, groaning. He fumbled for some time with the 
padlock, then he came up to the girls, put his hand on 
his loins and stroked his goat-like beard. 

“Still singing, nightingales ?” 

“We are, Uncle Fedor, but not about you.” 

‘Til get the whip to you in a minute. What trick 
is this to be singing at night?” 

“Do you envy us?” 


[ 179 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


Another remarked with a sigh: 

“We’ve nothing else left us, Uncle Fedor, but to sing 
about our Khlibi.” 

“Things are in a bad way with you. You are quite 
orphans now.” 

Fedor sat down by the girls. The one nearest him 
said: 

“The Kosmodemianskia women are saying that they 
are taking such a lot of people to the war lately, half the 
world.” 

“It will soon be our turn, girls.” 

“Will they take us to the war?” 

“An order has been given that all women are to have 
their hair shorn like soldiers. Only, they say that you 
smell too strong when on the march.” 

The girls laughed. The furthest one again asked: 

“Uncle Fedor, with whom is our Tsar at war?” 

“With the European.” 

“Where does he live, Uncle Fedor?” 

“By the sea, most of them.” 

At this a shaggy head rose from a stump hidden in the 
grass and pulling a coat over itself with a groan, said: 

“Hold your nonsense, do. What is that about a Euro¬ 
pean? It’s with the German we are at war.” 

“Everything is possible,” Fedor replied. 

The head disappeared once again. Antoshka Arnol- 
dov took out his cigarette-case and offering Fedor a 
cigarette, asked cautiously: 

“Do tell me, did your men go willingly to the war?” 

“Many went eagerly, sir.” 

“Then there was enthusiasm?” 

“There was. There is plenty to eat in the army, they 
say. Why shouldn’t they go? At any rate, they would 
see what it was like there. And if you are killed, well, 

[ 180 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


you have to die here just the same. Our land is wretch¬ 
edly poor, extra work is bad. We eke out a living on 
bread and kvas. There, they say, the food is good. You 
get meat twice a day and State sugar and tea and to¬ 
bacco, which you can smoke as much as you like.” 

“But isn’t fighting horrible?” 

“Horrible? Of course, it is. Nineteen reserves were 
taken from our village and three others went voluntarily. 
Can you lend me a cigarette, sir?” 


[ 181 ] 


XV 


Tarpaulin-covered carts, loads of hay and straw, am¬ 
bulances, a huge trough of pontoons, moved, jolting and 
creaking, along the wide road, covered with liquid mud. 
A fine, driving rain came down ceaselessly. The ruts and 
ditches on either side of the road were filled with water. 
The dim forms of trees and thickets could be seen in the 
distance. A keen wind blew, and scattered, rolling clouds 
sped over the stormy, sodden fields. 

Amidst yells and curses and cracking of whips and 
jarring of axle on axle, the heavy baggage-train of the 
advancing Russian army moved in the mud and rain. 
On either side of the road lay dead and dying horses 
and wheels of upturned carts. Now and again a military 
motor-car would dash into the stream. There were 
shouts and groans; the horses reared; the loads on the 
inclining carts came down and the men on top of them 
followed with a clatter. 

Further along, where there was a break in the stream, 
soldiers stretched far in the distance, ploughing through 
the mud with bags and tents slung over their shoulders. 
Through the disorderly crowd came the baggage-carts, 
with rifles sticking out on all sides and orderlies huddled 
on top. Now and again a man would run into the fields, 
put aside his rifle and squat down. 

Still further on there were more jolting carts and 
pontoons and gun-carriages and carriages with drenched 
figures in officers’ cloaks inside them. The rumbling 
stream would now bear down into the open valley, 

[ 182 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


crowding together, yelling, fighting at the bridges, now 
stretch slowly up the hills and disappear over the top. 
From either side still other loads poured in, of bread 
and hay and shells. Small cavalry units passed them 
in the fields. 

With a clang and clatter of iron, artillery would break 
into the stream now and then. Big, broad-chested horses, 
whose riders with bearded, angry faces, cracked their 
whips at horses and men, ploughed through the road, 
dragging the jolting, flat-nozzled guns behind them. And 
once more the stream came together and flowed into the 
wood, which smelt strongly of mushrooms and dead 
leaves and was filled with the soft sounds of the falling 
rain. 

Further along, on either side of the road, chimneys 
stuck out from heaps of rubbish and charred wood; a 
broken lantern swung to and fro; on the brick wall of 
a house, split by a shell, a gaily coloured poster of a 
cinematograph flapped about. And here too, in a cart 
without its front wheels, lay a wounded Austrian in 
a blue coat, probably dying, with a drawn yellow face, 
dim desperate eyes. 

About twenty miles from the spot there was a dull 
rumbling of guns on the smoky horizon. Thither troops 
and baggage flowed day and night. Thither from every 
corner of Russia sped trains bearing bread and men and 
shells. 

The whole country was shaken by the thunder of the 
guns. At last there would be set free all that was for¬ 
bidden and smothered, the amassed store of greed, in¬ 
satiability, iniquity and evil. 

The population of the town, satiated, slack and cor¬ 
rupted as they were by an evil life, seemed to awake 
from a suffocating sleep. In the rumble of the guns the 

[ 183 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


refreshing voice of the world storm was heard. They 
began to feel that the old life was no longer bearable, 
that Russia would rot alive. And with a malicious joy 
the people welcomed the war. 

In the country they did not trouble much as to why 
and with whom there was a war. What did it matter? 
Had not anger and hate like a bloody mist for long be¬ 
dimmed the eyes? A time of terrible deeds had come. 
Young fellows and young peasants left their women 
and girls and crowded eagerly into the goods-carriages 
and were borne whistling and singing ribald songs past 
the towns. The old life had ended. Russia, like a large 
spoon, began to stir up the mud. All stirred, all moved, 
drunk with the strong liquor of war. 

Within about eight miles of the battle lines the bag¬ 
gage and troop units dispersed and vanished. Here 
everything human and living ended. Every one was al¬ 
lotted a place in the earth, in a trench. There one had 
to sleep, to eat, and kill lice and “crack” one’s rifle at the 
line of rainy mist until one was sick. 

At night the whole horizon would grow a flaming red; 
slowly the burning houses blazed; the red strings of a 
rocket would make a line through the sky and come 
down again in stars; with piercing shrieks shells flew 
and crashed to the earth, exploding in pillars of fire, 
smoke and dust. 

There was a gnawing in the stomach and one was sick 
with fear; the skin crept and the fingers clenched. About 
midnight signals would be given. Trembling officers 
would come running up. With curses and oaths and 
blows the men would be aroused, puffed from sleep and 
dampness. Stumbling and swearing and yelling, a dis¬ 
orderly group of men would run across the field, now 
lying down, now springing up, and deafened and mad, 

[ 184 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


with memories lost in their terror and wrath, they would 
spring into the enemy trenches. 

Afterwards, no one ever remembered what took place 
in those trenches. 

If a man boasted of heroic deeds, of the way in which 
he plunged his bayonet, or how at a blow from the butt 
end of his rifle, a head split open and brains came out, 
he would simply be lying. 

After the business of the night there were corpses and 
the taking of their tobacco, blankets and coffee. 

A new day dawned; the kitchens arrived. The men, 
sleepy and starved, ate and smoked. Afterwards they 
talked nonsense of women and also lied freely. They 
caught lice and slept. They slept for days in that bare 
spot of thunder and death, befouled by excrement and 
blood. 

Thus too, in the dirt and dampness, without taking his 
clothes and boots off for weeks at a time, lived Teliegin, 
The army regiment in which he had enrolled as ensign 
was attacking. More than half the strength of officers 
and men had been put out of action. No reinforce¬ 
ments had come and every one merely longed for the 
moment when he would be moved to the rear, so worn 
and exhausted was he. 

But the higher command was anxious to press into 
Austria through the Carpathians before the winter came 
and to lay the country waste, it being necessary to make 
the Austrians starve. People were not spared; the sup-, 
ply of humans was plentiful. It seemed that the sus¬ 
tained effort of three months’ ceaseless fighting must 
break the resistance of the Austrian army, which was 
retreating in disorder, that Krakow and Vienna would 
fall and that the left wing of the Russians would attack 
the German rear. 


[ 185 ] 


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In pursuance of this plan, the Russian troops marched 
to the west without stopping, taking thousands upon 
thousands of prisoners, huge stores of provisions, shells, 
guns and clothing. In former wars but a part of such 
booty, or one only of those long, bloody battles, in 
which whole corps were wiped out, would have decided 
the campaign. Yet, notwithstanding the fact that the 
regular army had perished in the early fighting, deter¬ 
mination hardened. Hatred became the highest manifes¬ 
tation of virtue. Voluntarily or involuntarily, all joined 
the war, children and old men, the whole people. Some¬ 
thing in this war surpassed human understanding. It 
would seem that the enemy was crushed, bled out, that 
one more effort would bring decisive victory. The effort 
was made and in place of the vanishing enemy army an¬ 
other grew up, that with a hopeless determination, 
marched on death and destruction. Neither Tartar nor 
Persian hordes could have fought so cruelly or died 
so readily as did these spoiled Europeans of frail phy¬ 
sique, or the cunning Russian peasants who knew them¬ 
selves to be dumb beasts—meat in the butchery arranged 
by their masters. It was this determination on the part 
of the peoples that spoiled all the plans of the higher 
command and made one think that in this war there was 
some other aim than the victory of this or that side. But 
the aim was, so far, hidden from the understanding. 

The remnant of Teliegin’s regiment was entrenched 
on the bank of a narrow, deep river. The position was 
a bad one, being exposed, while the trenches were small. 
The regiment was hourly expecting an order to advance, 
but for the time being all were pleased to be able to 
sleep, change boots and rest, although from the other 
side of the river, where the Austrians were strongly en¬ 
trenched, sharp gunfire was in progress. 

[ 186 ] 


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In the evening, when for some three hours the firing 
usually ceased, Ivan Ilyitch set out to visit the regimental 
staff, quartered in a deserted castle about a mile and a 
half from the position. 

A white, fleecy mist lay on the winding, weed-cov¬ 
ered river and wound about the bushes on the bank. It 
was still and damp and the air smelt of moist leaves. 
Now and then, from across the water, came the dull 
solitary boom of a gun. 

Ivan Ilyitch jumped across a ditch into the road, 
stopped and lighted a cigarette. On either side of him, 
from out of the mist, rose tall, bare trees, that seemed 
monstrously high. Beyond them, a low-lying swamp 
looked as if it had been filled with milk. A bullet 
whizzed plaintively in the stillness. Ivan Ilyitch sighed 
deeply. He walked along the scrunching gravel, gazing 
upwards at the shadowy treetops and branches. The 
quietness and the fact that he was alone and able to 
think, had a soothing effect on him. Gone was the split¬ 
ting noise of the day, and his heart grew filled with a 
gentle, poignant sadness. Once more he sighed. He 
threw away his cigarette, put his hands at the back of 
his head and walked along in another world, filled only 
with the shadows of trees, his warm, love-laden heart 
and Dasha’s invisible charm. 

Dasha was with him in that hour of quiet and rest. 
He felt himself in contact with her every time the metal¬ 
lic shriek of the shells ceased, the booming of the guns, 
the yelling and the oaths and all the sounds so foreign 
to this God-created world, when he would creep into 
some dugout and bury his head in his coat. At those 
moments an indescribable gentleness permeated him and 
filled his heart. Dasha was with him always, true and 
severe. 


[ 187 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


It seemed to Ivan Ilyitch that when he came to die, he 
would feel the joy of this contact to the last moment and 
that when liberated from himself, he would be sub¬ 
merged and resurrected in it. He did not think of death, 
nor was he afraid of it. Nothing could now tear him 
from that wonderful condition of life, not even death. 


That summer, when he had come to Evpatoriya to see 
Dasha, he was frightened and anxious and tried to in¬ 
vent all manner of excuses. But the meeting on the 
roadside, Dasha’s unexpected tears, her fair head pressed 
against him, her hair, her arms, her shoulders, which 
all smelt of the sea, her tear-stained mouth, which said, 
as she raised her face to him with half-closed, wet eye¬ 
lids, “I did so want to see you, dear Ivan Ilyitch!” and 
all those unspoken things which seemed to have dropped 
from the skies into that road by the sea, had, in a few 
minutes, changed Ivan Ilyitch’s life. Instead of offering 
excuses, he said softly and resolutely, gazing at her be¬ 
loved face, which trembled in fear and agitation: 

“I will love you always, Dasha.” 

Afterwards, he wondered whether he had spoken the 
words at all, or had merely thought them, Dasha under¬ 
standing. She had dropped her head, and taking her 
hands from his shoulders, said: 

“I have a lot to tell you. Come.” 

They had gone and sat down by the water on the 
sand. Dasha had picked up a handful of stones and 
leisurely threw them into the water. 

“The fact is, I don’t know how you would treat me 
if you knew everything,” she said, observing with a cor¬ 
ner of her eye that Ivan Ilyitch had turned pale and com- 

[ 188 ] 



THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


pressed his lips. “It doesn’t matter, however; you can 
treat me as you like.” 

She sighed and leaned her chin on her hands. Her 
eyes again filled with tears, but she wiped them angrily 
with her bare hand. 

“Without you I have lived very badly, Ivan Ilyitch. 
If you can, forgive me.” 

And she told him everything, frankly and in detail. 
She told him about Samara and how she had come to this 
place and met Bezsonov, how she had lost desire to 
live in her disgust at the Petersburg poison, which had 
come to life again and affected her blood, fired her 
curiosity. . . . 

“Until what age must I wait to know? I was twenty, 
thank God, a woman like other women. I wanted to 
wallow in dirt—a fit place for me. But I was fright¬ 
ened at the last moment ... I hate myself . . . Ivan 
Ilyitch, my dear. ...” Dasha clasped her hands. “Help 
me. I won’t, I can’t hate myself any more. ... I am a 
bad, wicked girl . . . But it can’t be that everything 
in me is lost ... I want to love, my dear . . .Not 
myself, oh, no. ...” 

After this, Dasha lay on the sand without speaking 
for a long time. Ivan Ilyitch gazed intently at the sun¬ 
lit mirror of blue water; in spite of everything his soul 
was filled with gladness. When he dared to look at 
Dasha, she was sleeping, her mouth slightly open, like 
a child’s. 

The fact that the war had begun and that Teliegin 
had to join his regiment on the morrow, Dasha realized 
only later, when a gust of wind caused a wave to splash 
her feet and she sighed and opened her eyes and sat up 
and looked at Ivan Ilyitch with a gentle, astonished smile. 

“Ivan Ilyitch!” 


[ 189 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


“Yes.” 

“Do you like me?” 

“Yes.” 

“Very much?” 

“Yes.” 

Then she started to crawl towards him in the sand, 
on her knees, sat down beside him and turning, put her 
hand in his, as she had once done on the steamer. 

“And I also . . . Ivan Ilyitch.” 

She pressed his fingers and asked after a pause: 

“What was that you were telling me in the road about 
a war?” She wrinkled her forehead. “With whom is 
there a war?” 

“With the Germans.” 

“And you?” 

“I am going tomorrow.” 

Dasha gave a little cry and was silent. 

Running towards them by the sea, in his crumpled 
striped pajamas, that looked as if he had just got out 
of bed, was Nikolai Ivanovitch. He was red in the 
face, shouting something and waving a newspaper. 

He took not the slightest notice of Ivan Ilyitch. When 
Dasha said, “Nikolai, this is my best friend,” Nikolai 
Ivanovitch seized Teliegin by the coat and shaking him, 
bawled into his face: 

“Remember, my friend, I’ma patriot above everything. 
I won’t give your Germans an inch of our land. . . .” 

The whole of that day Dasha did not leave Ivan II- 
yitch’s side. She was quiet and pensive. To him the 
day was filled with the blue light of the sun and the 
sound of the sea, incredibly vast. Every moment was 
like a separate lifetime. 

Teliegin and Dasha wandered along the shore in a 
dazed condition, or lay on the sand or sat on the terrace, 

[ 190 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


perpetually followed by Nikolai Ivanovitch, who ha¬ 
rangued largely about the cause of the war and German 
aggression. Teliegin listened, nodding his head, while 
he thought “Dasha, Dasha, darling. ...” 

“You’ve no backbone at all, my friend,” and he turned 
to Dasha. “I could strangle Wilhelm with my own 
hands.” 

Dasha looked at his flushed face and thought, “O, 
God, take care of Ivan Ilyitch. ...” 

In the evening, however, they managed to escape from 
Nikolai Ivanovitch and took a long walk by the bay. 
They walked in silence, stepping on each other’s feet, 
touching each other’s elbows. It suddenly occurred to 
Ivan Ilyitch that he must speak some kind of words to 
Dasha. She must be expecting him to make a passionate 
and moreover a definite declaration. But what words 
could his wooden tongue frame? Can words express 
the emotions that filled him, the sunlight that had en¬ 
tered his heart? Oh, no! 

Ivan Ilyitch grew sad. “It would be a shame to speak 
to her,” he thought. “She cannot love me, but like 
the good, true girl she is, she will consent if I propose. 
That would be forcing her. Moreover, I have no right 
to speak. We are parting for who knows how long; 
I may never come back from the war ... It would 
make her wait uselessly to keep her word ... It can¬ 
not be. ...” 

It was one of those attempts at self-effacement, so 
characteristic of Ivan Ilyitch. Dasha stopped suddenly 
and supporting herself against his shoulder, took off 
her shoe. . . . 

“Oh, Lord, oh, Lord,” she said, shaking the sand from 
her shoe. She put it on, drew herself up and sighed 
deeply. 


[191 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


“I know I shall love you very much when you art 
gone, Ivan Ilyitch.” 

She put her hands on his shoulders and looking at 
him with her clear, almost severe grey eyes without a 
smile in them, she sighed again lightly. 

“Even there we will be together, won’t we ?” 

Ivan Ilyitch drew her gently to himself and kissed her 
soft, trembling lips. Dasha shut her eyes. When their 
breath gave out, Dasha drew back. She took his arm 
and they walked along by the heavy, dark water, which 
in purple flashes lapped the shore at their feet. 


In every moment of quiet Ivan Ilyitch recalled these 
incidents with an unfailing emotion. Strolling along the 
road with his hands at the back of his head, in the mist, 
among the trees, he once more saw Dasha’s fixed gaze, 
felt her kiss, the breath of life. 

In that hour he had ceased to be alone and would 
never be alone again. A girl in a white dress had kissed 
him one evening by the sea and the leaden ring of loneli¬ 
ness had melted. He, Ivan Ilyitch Teliegin, had ceased 
to be. In that wonderful moment, a completely new Ivan 
Ilyitch had come to life. The first was subject to de¬ 
struction, the second would never cease to exist. The 
first was solitary as a devil on a waste, the second longed 
to expand, to increase, to take to his warm, palpitating 
heart men and beasts and the earth and everything. 

“Who goes there?” a starved, coarse voice asked from 
out the fog. 

“One of us,” Ivan Ilyitch replied. He put his hands 
in the pockets of his coat and turned down by some 
oak trees towards the dark, heavy outline of the castle, 

[ 192 ] 



THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


in several windows of which a yellow light burned. 

On catching sight of Teliegin, some one at the en¬ 
trance threw away a cigarette and drew himself erect. 

“Has the post come?” 

“No, Your Honour, we are expecting it.” 

Ivan Ilyitch walked into a hall. A large, black piano 
with a leg gone, was supported against a wall. At the 
top of a wide, winding oak staircase hung a Gobelin 
tapestry, probably very old. It depicted Adam and Eve 
standing beneath some thin trees. Eve held an apple in 
her hand, a symbol of the sweets of life, Adam held a 
flowering branch, a symbol of the fall and the redemp¬ 
tion. Their faded faces and elongated bodies were dimly 
lighted by a candle, which was stuck in a bottle standing 
on the banister. 

Ivan Ilyitch opened a door to the right and entered a 
bare room with a moulded ceiling, tumbled down at one 
end, the result of a shell hitting the wall outside the day 
before. On a bunk, by a blazing fire, sat Lieutenant 
Prince Belsky and Sub-Lieutenant Martinov. Ivan Il¬ 
yitch greeted them, asked when they expected the car 
from the army staff and sat down near by, on some car¬ 
tridge tins, his eyes blinking at the light. 

“Are they still firing on you, eh?” Martinov asked de¬ 
risively for some reason. 

Ivan Ilyitch did not reply; he shrugged his shoulders. 
Prince Belsky went on speaking in a low voice. 

“It’s the stink that’s the worst. As I wrote to my 
people, I’m not afraid to die. I’m ready enough to give 
my life for my country. In fact, that’s why I transferred 
to the infantry and am sitting in the trenches. But the 
stink’s killing me.” 

“The stink’s nothing. If you don’t like it, you needn’t 
smell,” said Martinov, arranging his shoulder-strap. 

[ 193 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


“What gets me is that there are no women. Perfectly 
ridiculous! It can’t lead to any good. There’s the army 
commander, an old sandbox. He’s arranged a kind of 
monastery for us. No vodka, no women. Is this the 
way of looking after the army? Is this war? I have 
been at the front for three months, for the fourth I’ll 
try and get back to the rear, somehow. Why, eh? Give 
me a woman and damn the rear. I’ve always said you’ve 
got to be jolly when you’re fighting.” 

Martinov got up from the bunk and began to poke the 
logs with his boot. Prince Belsky smoked pensively, 
staring at the fire. 

“Five million men in this stink,” he said, “and all the 
rotting corpses and horses. I shall always remember the 
war as a stench. Augh!” 

Outside, the throbbing of a car was heard. 

“Gentlemen, the post!” an excited voice called from 
the door. The officers went outside. Dark figures moved 
about the car; several men ran across the yard. A hoarse 
voice said, “Gentlemen, don’t snatch!” 

At last the bags of letters and parcels were brought into 
the hall and unpacked on the stairs, beneath Adam and 
Eve. It was the post for a whole month. The dirty can¬ 
vas bags contained a sea of love and longing, all that 
was dear and clean in the life that had been left behind. 

“Gentlemen, don’t snatch!” said Captain Babkin, a 
stout, red-faced man. “Ensign Teliegin, six letters and 
a parcel for you. Lieutenant Nejny, two letters. . . .” 

“Nejny was killed, gentlemen.” 

“When?” 

“This morning.” 

Ivan Ilyitch walked over to the fireplace. All the six 
letters were from Dasha. The addresses on the envelopes 
were written in a large, rather childish hand. Ivan II- 

[ 194 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


yitch loved the dear hand that had written the letters so 
large, to make sure they would be legible and that there 
would be no mistake. Bending to the fire, he carefully 
tore open one of the envelopes. The letter brought him 
such memories that he was forced to shut his eyes. Then 
he read: 

“After we had seen you off, Nikolai Ivanovitch and 
I that same day went to Simferopol and caught the 
Petersburg train that evening. We are now living in our 
old flat. Nikolai Ivanovitch is very anxious; there is 
no news from Katia and we don’t know where she is. 
What happened between us is so big and unexpected that 
I have hardly come to myself yet. Don’t be angry with 
me for addressing you as ‘you.’ I love you. I shall be 
true to you and will love you very much. At present 
everything is so confusing. Troops are passing in the 
street and the band is playing. It is so sad. It seems 
as if gladness were going away with the drums and the 
troops. I know I ought not to write like this to you, 
but still, you will be careful at the front. ...” 

“Your Honour. Your Honour.” Teliegin turned with 
difficulty. A messenger stood in the doorway. “A tele¬ 
phone message for you. Your Honour.” 

“What is it?” 

“You are wanted in the battalion.” 

“Who wants me?” 

“Sub-Lieutenant Rosanov. He said, ‘Tell him to come 
as soon as possible.’ ” 

Teliegin folded up the unfinished letter and put it in¬ 
side his shirt with the others, then he pulled his cap 
over his eyes and went out. 

The fog had grown thicker; the trees were now in¬ 
visible; one walked in the milky mist, keeping to the 
road only by the sound of the scrunching gravel beneath 

[ 195 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


the feet. Ivan Ilyitch scrunched over the gravel, repeat¬ 
ing, “I shall be true to you and will love you very much.” 

Suddenly he stopped and listened. No sound could be 
heard in the fog, only the heavy drops that fell from 
the trees now and then. Soon a gurgling and soft rus¬ 
tling were borne to him from some short distance ahead. 
As he went the gurgling sound grew louder. Suddenly 
his foot came down an empty space. A clump of earth 
had broken off beneath it and fallen with a heavy splash 
into the water. 

It must have been the place by the burnt bridge, where 
the road ended by the river. On the opposite bank, about 
a hundred steps from where he stood, he knew were the 
Austrian trenches, which came right up to the water. 
And in fact, immediately after the splash, like the crack 
of a whip, a rifle report came rolling down the river, 
followed by another and a third until, like the bursting 
of iron, came a long boom and answering it, through 
the fog, came rapid reports. Louder and louder it 
banged and boomed and shrieked from every part of the 
river and in the midst of the fiendish noise the quick, 
hurried report of a machine gun could be heard, sounding 
like the cracking of nuts. A shell burst in the wood. 
Broken, the fog hung over the earth like a heavy veil, 
screening the usual, horrible scene. Several bullets hit 
against a tree near by, bringing down the branches. Ivan 
Ilyitch turned into the fields and groped his way to the 
bushes. The firing stopped just as suddenly as it had 
begun. Ivan Ilyitch took off his cap and wiped his wet 
forehead. Once more it was still, with the sound only 
of the falling drops from the bushes. Thank God, he 
would be able to read Dasha’s letters that night. Ivan 
Ilyitch laughed and jumped across a ditch. At last he 
heard some one yawn near by and say: 

[ 196 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 

“There, you’ve got your letter. Vasily, you’ve got your 
letter.” 

“Be quiet,” an abrupt voice said, “some one is coming.” 

“Who is there?” 

“One of us, one of us,” Teliegin said hurriedly as he 
caught sight of a breastwork trench and two bearded 
faces sticking out of it. 

“What company are you?” 

“The third, Your Honour, ours. You should not walk 
up there, Your Honour, you may be hit.” 

Teliegin jumped into the trench and walked to the 
entrance of the officers’ dugout. The men, who had been 
awakened by the firing, were talking among themselves. 

“They could easily cross the river in a fog like this.” 

“We’d never let them.” 

“What a row to kick up all of a sudden 1 What a 
life! Did they think they’d scare us, or were they scared 
themselves ?” 

“Aren’t you scared?” 

“To be sure, I am.” 

“Gavril has had his finger blown off, boys.” 

“Has he gone to get it bandaged?” 

“You would have laughed; he gave a howl and held it 
up like this.” 

“Lucky devil; they’ll send him home now.” 

“No fear! If he’d had his arm off they'd have sent 
him home, but not for a finger. They’ll keep him rotting 
around here and then back to the company he’ll come.” 

“I wonder when the war’s going to end.” 

“Chuck it.” 

“It’ll end some day, but we shan’t be there to see it.” 

“If we’d only take Vienna.” 

“What do you want with Vienna, eh?” 

“We could look at the place, at any rate.” 


[ 197 1 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


“If the war’s not finished by the spring, the men’ll 
make off, all the same. Who’s to do the ploughing ? The 
women? We’ve had enough of being chopped about. 
And what’s it for? It’s time it stopped. If you drink 
long enough, you’ll fall away on your own account.” 

“The generals won’t stop the war.” 

“What do you know about it? Has some one told 
you? I’ll smash you in the jaw, you-!” 

“The generals won’t stop the war.” 

“He’s right, boys. It suits them; they draw double pay 
and get crosses and honours into the bargain. A fellow 
told me that for every recruit the English pay our gen¬ 
erals thirty-seven and a half roubles.” 

“The dirty dogs! They sell us like beasts.” 

“Stop this talk, do. What good does it do ?” 

“All right. If we hold out, we’ll see.” 

When Teliegin entered the dugout the battalion com¬ 
mander, Sub-Lieutenant Rosanov, an indolent, kindly, in¬ 
telligent man, stout and short-winded, in spectacles, with a 
large head and thin hair, said from where he sat in a 
corner on some horse-cloths : “So you’ve come at last!” 

“I’m sorry, Fedor Kusmitch; I got lost in the fog.” 

“All right. Look here, my dear fellow, we’ve got to 
be busy tonight.” He put a crust of bread in his mouth, 
which he had been holding in his dirty hand. Teliegin 
shut his jaws tight and pulled himself together. > . . 

“The fact is, my dear fellow, we’ve been ordered to 
cross to the other side. We must do the business as 
simply as possible. Sit down here by me. Shall we 
have a glass of brandy, eh? Now this is my idea . . . 
We must put a bridge across by the i>ig laburnum. Not 
more than seventy men must be sent across. You’ll do 
the best you can, God bless you ... At daybreak we’ll 
follow. ...” 

[ 198 ] 



XVI 


“Sussov ?” 

“Here, Your Honour.” 

“Dig gently; don’t throw into the water. That’s right. 
Forward, boys, forward. Zubtsov!” 

“Here, Your Honour.” 

“Lend a hand here. Put it there. A little more dig¬ 
ging . . . Lower it . . . gently. ...” 

“Careful, boys; you’ll take the skin from my shoulder 
. . . Push. ...” 

“Come on there, throw!” 

“Don’t make such a row, you swine!” 

“Fix the other side . . . Shall we lift. Your Honour?” 

“Are the ends fixed?” 

“It’s all ready.” 

“Up!” 

In the clouds of mist, bathed in moonlight, two long 
stakes connected by cross-beams, a suspension bridge, 
rose with a groan. The dim figures of the volunteers 
moved about the bank, speaking and swearing in low 
hurried tones. 

“Is it in place?” 

“It’s gone in well.” 

“Lower it. Mind!” 

“Gently, boys, gently. ...” 

The stakes, fixed at the ends to the bank of the river, 
at its narrowest point, leant slowly forward and the 
bridge was suspended over the water in the fog. 

“Does it reach the bank?” 


[ 199 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


“Lower gently.” 

“Stop!” 

The end of the bridge, however, dropped into the 
water with a loud splash. Teliegin threw up his hands. 

“Lie down!” 

The men lay down silently on the bank and were hid¬ 
den in the grass. The fog had begun to lift, but the 
night was darker and the air sharper before the dawn. 
All was still on the other side. 

“Zubtsov!” Teliegin called. 

“Here.” 

“Get in and lay the planks.” 

The tall figure of one of the men who had volunteered, 
Vasili Zubtsov, slipped past Teliegin to the water. Tel¬ 
iegin saw his large trembling hands clutch the grass, 
let it go, then disappear. 

“Deep enough,” Zubtsov said to some one below, in 
a chilled whisper. 

“Hand up the boards, boys.” 

“The boards, hand up the boards. ...” 

Quickly and silently the boards passed along from 
hand to hand. They could not be fixed for fear of noise. 

Having put down the first row, Zubtsov got out of the 
water on to the bridge. His teeth chattered as he said 
in a whisper, “Hurry up, there; don’t go to sleep. ...” 

The icy water gurgled quickly under the bridge; the 
stakes swayed. Teliegin distinguished the dim forms of 
bushes on the opposite bank and though they were the 
same bushes as on this side, they took on a sinister ap¬ 
pearance. The bushes had to be possessed. Ivan II- 
yitch returned to the bank where his men lay. 

“Up!” he said sharply. 

Exaggeratedly tall, dissolving figures rose instantly in 
the white mist. 

[ 200 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


“Run, in single file.” 

Teliegin turned to the bridge. Just then a ray of 
sunlight seemed to fall on the cloud of mist, lighting up 
the yellow boards, thrown down by the black-bearded 
Zubtsov in terror. The light of a projector swept to the 
side and fell on the hitherto unseen bare, rugged 
branches, then came back again to the boards. Teliegin 
held his breath as before plunging into cold water and 
ran across the bridge. Suddenly the dark stillness was 
broken by a loud thundering in the head. From the 
Austrian side, rifle and machine-gun fire was directed 
on the bridge. Teliegin jumped on the bank, lay down 
and turned. A tall man was running across the bridge 
—he could not make out who it was—with rifle pressed 
to his breast. The rifle dropped, up went his arms as 
though he were laughing, and sideways he fell into the 
water. The machine-gun beat upon the bridge, the 
water, the bank. Another man ran across and lay down 
by Teliegin. 

“Fll tear the bloody swine.” 

A second and a third and a fourth ran across. An¬ 
other threw up his hands with a groan and crashed into 
the water. . . . 

All had now crossed. They lay down and piled up the 
earth with their shovels. The firing raged all over the 
river. You could not raise your head. The machine- 
gun rained down on the spot where the men lay. Sud¬ 
denly, there was a whiz overhead, once, twice, six times 
and six deafening explosions followed. It was our side, 
firing at the machine-gun nest. 

Teliegin and Zubtsov sprang up and ran some forty 
paces ahead, then again they lay down. The machine- 
gun had again opened fire from out the darkness on the 
'left. The firing on our side was clearly stronger; the 

[201 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


Austrians were driven underground. Taking advantage 
of the lull in the firing, the men ran to the place where 
our artillery had broken the wire entanglements by the 
Austrian trenches. An attempt had evidently been made 
to repair them at night, for a corpse hung on the wire. 
Zubtsov cut the wire and the corpse fell like a sack at 
Teliegin’s feet. A volunteer named Laptev, without 
his rifle, got ahead of the others on all fours. He lay 
right down by the breastwork. 

• Zubtsov called to him. 

“Get up and throw a bomb!” 

But Laptev was silent. He did not move or stir; his 
heart had evidently failed him in his fright. The firing 
grew stronger; the men could only keep close to the 
ground and entrench. 

“Get up and throw a bomb, you-!” Zubtsov yelled. 

“Throw a bomb!” and he stretched out his rifle and 
shoved Laptev in the back of his bulging coat. Laptev 
turned his frightened face, took a grenade from his belt 
and throwing himself against the breastwork, he hurled 
it in. When it had exploded, he jumped into the trench. 

“Kill, kill!” Zubtsov yelled in an unnatural voice. 

About ten men ran ahead and disappeared under¬ 
ground; rending, tearing sounds of explosions followed. 

Teliegin flung himself against the breastwork, so 
blinded by the blood that rushed to his head and he 
could not detach a grenade. He jumped into the trench, 
hitting his shoulders against the clay. He stumbled 
against some soft thing and clenched his teeth to keep 
himself from screaming outright. He could see a white 
mask—the face of a man—pressing against the slope of 
the trench. He seized him by the shoulders and the 
man kept on muttering and muttering, as in sleep. . . . 

“Stop that, you devil; I’m not going to touch you!” 

[ 202 ] 



THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


Teliegin bawled at the mask, almost in tears, and he 
fled, springing over the corpses. But the fighting had 
now finished. A crowd of grey figures, having thrown 
down their arms, were climbing out of the trench into 
the field. They were shoved with the butt ends of rifles, 
grenades were flung near by to scare them. And still 
the hidden machine-gun kept on its firing at the cross¬ 
ing. Ivan Ilyitch pushed his way through men and pris¬ 
oners, crying: 

“What are you staring at, eh? Zubtsov! Where’s 
Zubtsov ?” 

“Here.” 

“Why do you stand staring, you damned fool?” 

“But how can we get at him?” 

“I’ll get you in the jaw! Come!” 

They ran forward. Zubtsov pulled Teliegin by the 
sleeve. “Stop! There he is!” 

From the trench a narrow entrance led to a machine- 
gun emplacement. Teliegin rushed into it and every¬ 
thing shook in the darkness with the unbearable noise. 
He seized a man by the elbow and pulled him out. In¬ 
stant quiet followed. Nothing was heard but the heavy 
breathing of the man struggling. 

“You swine! You won’t let go alive, won’t you?” 
Zubtsov muttered at the back and struck him three 
heavy blows on the head with the butt end of his rifle. 
The man shuddered, groaned and was still. Teliegin 
dropped him and rushed out. 

“Your Honour, he’s chained!” Zubtsov called after 
him. 

Soon it grew light. The yellow clay was spattered 
with blood and calfskins, tins, frying-pans and corpses 
were strewn everywhere, the latter huddled like sacks. 
The starved and sleepy men were some of them lying 

[ 203 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


down and snoring, others eating jam and others rum¬ 
maging among the scattered Austrian bags. 

The prisoners had long since been driven across the 
river. The regiment had crossed over and occupied 
the position. The artillery was bombing the second 
Austrian lines, which were replying feebly. A drizzly 
rain fell; the fog had dispersed. Ivan Ilyitch, lean¬ 
ing with his elbow on the edge of the trench, looked 
out at the field over which they had come in the night. 
It was a field like other fields, rough and wet, with 
mounds of newly dug earth and a few corpses of his 
men. And the river was quite close, too. Gone were 
the monstrous trees and sinister bushes of the night 
before. What an amount of energy had been spent 
in crossing those three hundred paces or so! 

The Austrians continued to retreat and the Russian 
units followed without stopping until nightfall. 

Teliegin and his volunteers were ordered to take a 
small wood on the hill and, after a short space of cross¬ 
firing, by the evening occupied the place. 

They hastily entrenched, put out the defence guard, 
connected a telephone to their unit, ate the food they 
carried in their knapsacks and, though ordered to keep 
on firing throughout the night, they went to sleep in 
the rain, amid the smell of decaying leaves. 

Teliegin was sitting on a stump, leaning against the 
soft, moss-covered trunk of a tree. The drops from 
the branches would now and again fall down his collar, 
but he did not mind them, for they kept him awake. 
The excitement of the morning had long passed; he 
was terribly tired after his eight mile walk through 
sodden crops, climbing over fence and ditch, scarcely 
knowing where his stiff feet trod, and with his head 
swelling from pain. 

[ 204 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 

Some one walked across leaves. Zubtsov’s voice asked 
softly: 

“Would you like a biscuit?” 

“Thank you.” 

Ivan Ilyitch took the biscuit from him and began to 
chew; it was sweet and melted in his mouth. Zubtsov 
squatted down beside him. 

“Can I smoke, sir?” 

“Be careful, though.” 

“I have a pipe.” 

“You needn’t have killed that man, Zubtsov, need 
you ?” 

“The man with the machine-gun?” 

“Yes.” 

“I needn’t.” 

“Are you sleepy?” 

“No, I shan’t go to sleep.” 

“If I do, give me a shove.” 

Slowly and softly the raindrops fell on the decaying 
leaves, on his hands, on the peak of his cap. After the 
noise, the stench, the murder of the man at the machine- 
gun, the drops fell like balls of crystal. They fell into 
the darkness, into the depths, whence came the smell 
of decaying leaves. The murmuring woke him. “No, 
no!” Ivan Ilyitch opened his heavy eyes and stared 
at the dark branches, outlined in charcoal, as it were. 
“It’s silly to fire all night. You must give these peas¬ 
ants some rest. Eight killed, eleven wounded. . . . You 
ought to be more careful at the front . . . Oh, Dasha, 
Dasha!” . . . The crystal drops calmed and soothed 
him. . . .“Drops from Dasha’s fingers . . . Oh, God, 
oh, God. ...” 

“Ivan Ilyitch.” 

“I wasn’t asleep, Zubtsov.” 


[ 205 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


“Of course, you oughtn’t to kill a man for noth¬ 
ing. He’s got his own home and his family and you 
go and thrust your bayonet into him as though he 
were no more than a dummy. A rotten thing to do. 
And they give you a medal for it into the bargain. 
When I did the first one in, I couldn’t eat after¬ 
wards, it made me so sick. . . . And now, this is the 
ninth or tenth. Horrible, isn’t it? It would never have 
entered my head before. I’d have been frightened, but 
here they pat you on the head for it. Some one, I 
suppose, must have taken the sin upon themselves.” 

“What sin?” 

“Mine, if you will. What I mean is, that some one 
has taken my sin upon himself, a general, or some man 
in Petersburg who arranges these things. ...” 

“But it’s not a sin if you are defending your coun¬ 
try.” 

“But the German is also defending his country, Ivan 
Ilyitch. Why should we destroy each other? He also 
thinks he’s right. And who’s to blame in this game?” 

“Dangerous words, my friend.” 

“Why? Some one, I say, is to blame in this busi¬ 
ness and we’ll find him. It can’t be that all those people 
have been killed for nothing. If it’s a question of de¬ 
fending your country, I say, there needn’t have been 
such a war. If you, read the papers, you can’t make 
anything out. The world is tearing itself to pieces. 
Why don’t they negotiate instead of fighting?” 

“But what do you think about it?” 

“I? If I kill nine men, to my mind, I’m responsible, 
or I’m nothing. But if I am made to do it for nothing, 
I will tear the man to pieces who made me do it.” 

“What man?” 

“I don’t know what man. The man who’s to blame.” 

[ 206 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


“The Germans are to blame/’ 

“And I think that the man who allowed this war is 
to blame. There is no law whereby I can kill and wipe 
my hands of it. The man who took my sin upon him¬ 
self is responsible.” 

A single shot rang through the wood and instantly 
the defence guard opened an answering fire. It was 
the more astonishing in that the enemy had not been 
in that vicinity since yesterday. Teliegin rushed to the 
telephone. The operator put his head out of a hole. 

“The apparatus is not working, Your Honour.” 

Throughout the whole wood separate shots could be 
heard and bullets sang about the branches. The ad¬ 
vance posts spread out and opened fire. One of the 
volunteers, Klimov by name, bare-headed, walked up 
to Teliegin and said in a broken, unnatural voice, “We 
are surrounded on all sides. Your Honour!” He quickly 
put his hand to his face, sank to the ground, then fell 
forward on his face. “I’m dying, brothers!” another 
voice called in the darkness. 

Teliegin could distinguish the tall, motionless figures 
of his men among the tree trunks. They were all looking 
towards him. He knew it and his heart grew calm. 

He told them to scatter and singly to find their way 
out of the north side of the wood, probably not yet 
surrounded, while he himself and those of the men who 
wished to stay with him, would hold out as long as 
possible in the trenches. 

“I want five men. We’ll none of us come out alive. 
Which of you will stay?” 

Zubtsov stepped out from the trees and came towards 
him, then Sussov and a young fellow named Kolov. 

“We want two more,” Zubtsov said; “here, Riabkin!” 

“All right, I’m coming.” 


[ 207 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


“A fifth, a fifth!” 

A short, bearded man, in a short coat and rough can, 
rose from the ground. 

“I may as well stay.” 

Six men lay down about twenty paces apart from 
each other and opened fire. The figures by the trees 
vanished. Ivan Ilyitch fired several packets and then 
suddenly, he could see himself as a grinning corpse. 
In the morning men in grey coats would come and 
turn him over and rummage about his clothes, and a 
dirty hand would be thrust inside his shirt. 

He put down his rifle and dug a hole in the light, 
wet earth, then he took out Dasha’s letters, kissed them, 
put them in the hole, covered it up and spread dead 
leaves over the top. 

“Oh, oh!” Sussov’s voice moaned to the left. Only 
two packets of cartridges remained. Ivan Ilyitch crawled 
over to Sussov and leaning against him, took the pack¬ 
ets of cartridges from his case. Teliegin alone was 
firing now and a man on the other side. The car¬ 
tridges gave out. Ivan Ilyitch threw down his rifle 
and looked about. He got up and called to his men. 

“Here,” one voice only replied and Kolov walked up, 
leaning on his rifle. 

“No cartridges?” Ivan Ilyitch asked. 

“None.” 

“No answer from the others?” 

“No.” 

“Come then, let us run.” 

Kolov threw his rifle over his shoulder and ran 
under cover of the bushes. Teliegin had not gone ten 
paces when a dull, iron finger thrust him in the back. 


[ 208 ] 


XVII 


The idea of war as dashing* cavalry surprises, won¬ 
derful marches, heroic deeds of officers and men, turned 
out to be obsolete. 

The famous attack of the Horse-Guards, in which 
three squadrons in infantry formation passed the wire 
defences without firing a shot (the regiment commander 
was Prince Dolgoruky, who walked about under ma¬ 
chine-gun fire with a cigar in his mouth and habitually 
swore in French), led to half the strength of the regi¬ 
ment being lost in killed and wounded in the taking of 
two damaged heavy guns, which had been held by a 
single machine-gun. 

With the first months of war it was evident that the 
soldier of former days, the tall, big-whiskered man of the 
heroic type, who could ride furiously and fence and ig¬ 
nore bullets, was utterly useless. Machinery and the or¬ 
ganization of the rear were the primary factors in this 
war. The soldier was merely expected to die obediently 
in the place allotted him on the map. Dash and valour 
were not needed. What was wanted was a soldier with¬ 
out traditions, a civilian, who could hide in the ground 
and take on the colour of the dust. The romantic reg¬ 
ulations of the Hague Conference as to how it was moral 
and how immoral to kill, were simply broken. And with 
the scraps of paper, there flew away the last remnants of 
the moral laws, no longer needed by any one. Thence¬ 
forward, there was only one law—alike for man and ma¬ 
chine—the law of utility. 


[ 209 ] 


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Thus, in several months, the war had accomplished the 
work of a century. Until now many people used to think 
that every man could find a serious aim in life, be it the 
means of increasing happiness, or an aim more exalted. 
It was a remnant of mediaevalism; it sapped the will and 
impeded the march of civilization. The war made it evi¬ 
dent that humanity was like an ant-heap. All are of the 
same hue. There was no good and no evil and no happi¬ 
ness even for the man who understands the sad, hard law 
of life—the law of building the eternal graveyard. 

At a time when human happiness had by law and by 
force been placed in the category of ideas that had 
no meaning, when civilization turned to serving evil and 
destruction instead of good and happiness, science made 
its most wonderful and miraculous discoveries. It be¬ 
came apparent how much will for evil the human mind 
contained when freed from moral restrictions. 

The civilization of the machinery age had triumphed; 
the war was its crowning achievement. Throughout 
the world there was but one law, that of utility, and only 
one feeling, that of hatred. In every home of an evening 
hosts and guests would be gathered at the card-tables 
and bottles, making strategic plans and reading the news¬ 
papers, in which war correspondents gave descriptions 
of the stacks of enemy corpses they had seen with their 
own eyes. Kindly people and even young girls would 
gloat over these details. 

Children grew up in these years with the idea that life 
was an expectation of decisive battles, when the Lord 
God, in His mercy, would allow the destruction of some 
millions of enemies at one blow and cause whole nations 
to starve with hunger. It was held brave and righteous 
to kill. The newspapers reiterated and yelled and shrieked 
it and increased their circulation tenfold. 

[ 210 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


Some prophets each morning would predict the re¬ 
sults of battles and the collapse of the enemy. The pre¬ 
dictions of the famous prophetess, Madame Teb, were 
discussed. Fortune-tellers appeared, and people who cast 
horoscopes, and seers. Commodities were scarce. Prices 
rose. All export of raw materials had stopped. The 
three ports in the North and East, the only outlets of 
the isolated country, carried shells and implements of war. 
The soil was badly tilled. Milliards of paper money 
passed into the country and the peasants unwillingly sold 
their bread. 

In Stockholm, at a secret gathering of the Occult Lodge 
of the Anthroposophists, the founder of the order said 
that the terrible struggle which was taking place in the 
higher spheres had now been transferred to the earth and 
that it betokened the advent of a universal catastrophe 
and Russia would be the sacrifice for the redemption of 
sin. In fact, all sane reasoning was drowned in the 
ocean of blood that flowed throughout the three thousand 
versts of space composing Europe. Reason could not 
tell why humanity was ruthlessly destroying itself by 
means of iron, dynamite and hunger. Age-long ulcers 
had opened. The heritage of the past was asserting it¬ 
self. But this, too, did not explain it. 

The country grew desolate. Life stopped everywhere; 
people seemed to be governed by the dark forces of chaos. 
Forces stronger than instinct compelled the Aryan race 
which ruled the world to cross an abyss that must be 
filled with corpses of men. The war began to assume 
the aspect of the first act of a tragedy. 

At the spectacle, man, the lord of the earth, became 
small and puny and grew timid and helpless as a worm. 
People were sick with this worm-like condition and were 
disgusted with themselves. 


[211 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


It was hardest of all on the women. Each of them, 
to the extent of her beauty and charm and ability, tore 
away the web, which, though made of a fine thread, 
was strong enough for ordinary life. Leastways, those 
who had fallen into the web had hummed pleasingly 
of love. 

These nets, too, were broken by the war. To mend 
them was not to be thought of at such a time. That 
must wait till better days. And the women waited 
patiently and time went by and the precious years were 
barren and sad. 

And meanwhile, husbands and lovers and sons were 
numbered and lying as abstract units beneath piles 
of earth in field and wood and road. 



•*< 


“I said to my brother, ‘You know everything! I 
hate socialists. You could torture a person if he 
made a mistake in a single word.’ They all think they 
know everything! ‘You’re a mere shadow of a man/ 
I said to him. Naturally, he turned me out of doors 
after that and here I am in Moscow with no money. 
Awfully funny. Daria Dmitrievna, do ask Nikolai Ivan- 
ovitch. Any kind of a place would do, only I’d prefer 
a hospital train. ,, 

“All right. I’ll ask him.” 

“I have no friends at all here. Do you remember our 
‘Central Station’? Vasily Valet has been killed. An 
awful pity; he was such a clever young man. Sapojkov 
is also somewhere at the front. Jirov is in the Caucasus 
lecturing on futurism. Three of them are there. Sem- 
isvetov, the poet—they say he’s the biggest genius Rus- 

[ 212 ] 



THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


sia’s got. He doesn’t believe in the word; he holds by 
sound only. And then there’s Goldsmidt, who teaches 
life. I don’t know what’s become of Ivan Ilyitch Tel- 
iegin. You used to know him, didn’t you?” 

Elisaveta Kievna and Dasha were walking slowly down 
the street, piled high with snow. A fine snow was fall¬ 
ing and it creaked beneath their feet. A sledge dashed 
past them and the driver, putting out a crinkled cloth 
boot from the box, said in a bantering voice: 

“Mind, ladies; I might knock you down.” 

There had been a great deal of snow that winter. 
The snow-laden branches of the limes hung low over 
the street, and the white, snowy sky was filled with the 
flutter of birds. In scattered flocks jackdaws flew over 
the town, settling on tower and dome and disappearing 
into the cold heights. 

Dasha stopped at the street corner and rearranged her 
white shawl. Her face had become thinner; her eyes 
were larger and more solemn. The snow-flakes settled 
on her fur coat and muff. 

“Ivan Ilyitch is missing,” she said. “I know nothing 
whatever about him.” 

Dasha raised her eyes and looked up at the birds. 
They must have been very hungry in that snow-covered 
town. Elisaveta Kievna, with a frozen smile on her 
lips, stood with bowed head, enclosed in a cap with ear- 
flaps. She was dressed in a man’s coat, which was tight 
for her across the chest; the fur collar was too large and 
the sleeves were too short to cover her reddened hands. 
Snow-flakes fell and melted on her yellow neck. Her 
long lashes grew wet with tears. Dasha took her hand. 

“I shall talk to Nikolai Ivanovitch today.” 

“Tell him I’m ready to do anything.” Elisaveta Kiev¬ 
na stared at the ground, shaking her head. “I used to 

[ 213 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


love Ivan Ilyitch madly.” She laughed and once more 
her eyes filled with tears. “It was the best that was in 
me. I shall come tomorrow. Good-bye.” 

And she strode away in her cloth galoshes, her cold 
hands thrust into her pockets like a man. 

Dasha stared after her, then she raised her eyebrows 
and turned the corner, /where she entered a private 
house, that used to belong to a German—the director of 
a motor works—before the war, and was now used as 
a hospital. The lofty rooms, decorated in oak and 
leather, were filled with the smell of iodoform. Lying 
and sitting on the beds were wounded peasants, who 
looked like prisoners in their dressing-gowns and shaven 
heads. One man was pacing the room quietly in slip¬ 
pers, but 'when Dasha appeared, he glanced quickly 
towards her, a frown spreading over his low forehead, 
and lay down on the bed, resting his hands at the back 
of his head. 

“Sister!” a feeble voice called. Dasha approached a 
big, burly fellow with thick lips. “Turn me on my 
left side, for Christ’s sake,” he said with a groan at 
every word. Dasha put her arms round him and, exer¬ 
cising all her strength, she rolled him over on his side 
like a sack. “It’s time to take my temperature, Sister.” 
Dasha shook the thermometer and put it under his arm. 
“I’m always sick, Sister. If I eat a crumb, I bring it 
up. I’ve no strength left. Can you give me some 
drops ?” 

Dasha put the blanket over him and walked away. 
The men on the further side were smiling, and one of 
them said: 

“That stuff is put on for the gentry; he’s as strong 
as a boar. When they gave us sausages the other day, 
he ate yards of them.” 

[ 214 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


“Leave him alone. He does no harm. He gives 
Sister work and it keeps him amused.” 

“Sister, Semion wants to ask you something, but he’s 
afraid.” 

Dasha approached a bed on which sat a peasant with 
merry eyes as round as a daw’s and a tiny mouth, like 
a bear’s. His round, wreath-like beard was well brushed. 
He stuck out his beard towards Dasha as she ap¬ 
proached. 

“They are making fun of me. Sister. I don’t want 
anything, thank you.” 

“He’s swanking about a letter from a baroness. Sis¬ 
ter.” 

“I’ve got a letter from my wife, from the country. 
Would you like to see it?” 

Dasha laughed. The load on her heart grew lighter. 
She sat down on Semion’s bed and putting back the 
sleeves, began to examine the bandages. And Semion, 
with a desire to give her pleasure, began to detail his 
aches and pains. 


Dasha had come to Moscow in October, when Nikolai 
Ivanovtich, carried away by patriotic enthusiasm, had ob¬ 
tained a post in the Moscow section of the Union of 
Towns, which was working for the war. The Peters¬ 
burg flat had been let to an Englishman of the Military 
Mission, while he lived in simple style with Dasha, 
walked about in a leather coat, abused the pampered in¬ 
telligentsia and worked, to use his own words, like a 
horse. Dasha read for criminal law, took care of their 
small household and wrote daily to Ivan Ilyitch. Her 
soul was calm and protected. The past seemed distant, 

[215 ] 



THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


almost like another life and there was little desire to 
probe in it, as everything there was confused and dark. 
And so she only half lived, anxiously expecting news 
and troubled as to whether Ivan Ilyitch kept himself pure 
and clean. 

But this spiritual condition did not last long. One 
morning, at coffee, early in October, Dasha was turning 
over the sheets of “The Russkoe Slovo,” when, among 
the list of missing, she saw Teliegin’s name. The list 
occupied some two columns of small print. Wounded 
such and such, killed such and such, missing such and 
such, and at the very end, came Teliegin, Ivan Ilyitch, 
Ensign. Thus, in a few strokes, the fact that changed 
her whole existence was communicated. 

Dasha seemed to feel the small type, the dry words, 
the columns, the headlines, turn to blood. It was a mo¬ 
ment of indescribable horror. The newspaper sheet had 
become the thing it was describing, a blood-soaked, stink¬ 
ing mess. She could smell the stench and hear the groans 
of speechless voices. What had happened to Ivan Ilyitch 
and her own despair were lost in an onrush of animal 
horror and disgust. She clenched her teeth and lay down 
for a long time, until dusk. 

When Nikolai Ivanovitch came back to dinner, he sat 
at Dasha’s feet and stroked them silently. Dasha wept 
softly. 

“Never mind, Dasha, you wait.” Nikolai Ivanovitch 
comforted her. “He is only missing. I dare say he was 
taken prisoner. There are thousands of cases like that.” 

Nikolai Ivanovitch went to eat his dinner in the next 
room and ate noisily as usual, pouring the wine out with 
a gurgling sound from the decanter. He gave a deep 
sigh from time to time. At last he appeared in the door¬ 
way, wiping his mouth with his table-napkin. 

[ 216 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 

“Would you like some stewed fruit? It’s excellent 
fruit.” 

Dasha shook her head, bit her handkerchief and burst 
out crying loudly, covering her head with her coat. 

At night, Dasha dreamed that she was in a narrow 
room, ill lighted by a single window, which was covered 
with dust and cobwebs. On an iron bedstead sat a 
strange man in a soldier’s shirt. His grey, high cheek¬ 
boned face was disfigured, and with both hands, he was 
picking at his bald head, cracked like an egg, and putting 
the stufif beneath the skin into his mouth with his fingers. 

Dasha screamed so loudly as to bring Nikolai Ivan- 
ovitch with a blanket thrown round his shoulders to her 
bedside. For a long time he could not make out what had 
happened. He gave Dasha some valerian drops and took 
a dose himself. 

Dasha, sitting up in bed and beating her breast, was 
saying in quiet despair: 

“I can’t live any longer. Don’t you see, Nikolai, I can’t 
live any longer?” 

It was hard to live after what had happened, but to 
live as Dasha had done hitherto was impossible. 

The war had merely touched Dasha with a finger and 
all was rent and desolate. You could not run away from 
it. Henceforward every death and every tear was also 
her concern. After the first days of overwhelming de¬ 
spair, Dasha did the only thing that she could possibly 
do. She took a month’s course in nursing and entered a 
hospital. Thus her working days began. 

It was very hard at first. Wounded were brought from 
the front whose bandages had not been changed for eight 
and ten days. The stench that came from the lint, caked 
with blood and pus, made the nurses sick. At operations, 
Dasha had to hold a blackened arm or leg from which 

[ 217 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


the sores were dripping. She grew to know how strong 
men, stretched on table with clenched teeth, trembled with 
pain, their bodies covered with sweat. 

There was so much suffering in the world that there 
was not pity enough to bestow on it all. Dasha gradu¬ 
ally found herself bound up with this mutilated, blood- 
soaked life, until she felt that no other life existed. All 
that had happened previously, her selfish struggles, her 
disgust with herself, the struggle over the Bezsonov in¬ 
cident, even her real feeling for Ivan Ilyitch, now seemed 
only so much imagination. At night, a green-shaded lamp 
burning over an open book; on the other side of the wall, 
a red-haired soldier muttering; the bottles rattling on the 
plain wooden shelf from the vibration of a car driving 
up; some one shuffling along the corridor in slippers; on 
the half-open door, a fluttering sheet of paper, fastened 
with a drawing-pin. It was the dull working day of real 
life. 

Sitting in an armchair at night, Dasha recalled the past. 
It seemed more than ever like a dream to her. She had 
lived on the heights from whence the earth was unseen. 
She had lived as all had lived, self-centred, proud and 
pampered. And she fell from her transparent clouds to 
the dirty, blood-soaked earth, into that hospital, which 
smelt of sick human bodies. It was a kind of retribution 
for past sin. 

Had she not sinned in her relation to Ivan Ilyitch ? Had 
she given him love for love? She had kissed him by the 
sea, had written him letters and admired her own faithful¬ 
ness. And now that she knew not whether he were living 
or dead, she had not the heart to dissemble. In that hos¬ 
pital, where sick men were snoring and a Russian soldier 
was dying, to whom she would have to administer morphia 
in the next ten minutes, where the heights were forgotten, 

[ 218 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


she began to realize that she had not really cared for Ivan 
Ilyitch for a moment. And for the self that had written 
him those proud, false letters, she had ceased to care at 

all. 


The meeting that day with Elisaveta Kievna had had a 
disturbing effect on Dasha. The day had been a hard one. 
Wounded had been brought from Galicia in a bad condi¬ 
tion. One had to have a hand amputated, another an 
arm, while two were raving with delirium and tossing 
about on their beds. Dasha was very tired that day, but 
she could not rid her mind of the image of Elisaveta Kiev¬ 
na with her reddened hands and the man’s coat she wore 
and her pitiful smile and her eyes filled with tears. 

Resting that evening in the ante-room, Dasha stared at 
the green lamp-shade, reflecting that neither the hard 
work nor her weariness could justify her spiritual cold¬ 
ness. She had had her fill that day of groans and mutter- 
ings, had witnessed how the human body trembled in 
deadly convulsions, but her heart had remained as cold 
as ice. Her heart should have bled at the pain she had 
seen, but it did not bleed and she had felt neither pity nor 
love. “Oh, God!” But she had no love for God. She 
did not care for others or for herself. “If I could only 
stand crying at a street corner and say to a perfect 
stranger, T loved Ivan Ilyitch madly/ and go to him with 
my love!” 

Dasha kept thinking of Elisaveta Kievna, exalting her 
in her thoughts and depreciating herself. She shifted 
about in a large armchair and opened a book. It was a 
report for three months Of “The Activities of the Union 
of Towns.” It contained columns and figures and in¬ 
comprehensible words such as “transport” and “balance.” 

[ 219 ] 



THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


In despair, missing the sense of the words, Dasha stareu 
at the columns of figures. She could see herself from 
an entirely new angle. She was filled with shame. She 
threw down the book and went into the ward. 

The wounded were sleeping; the air was stuffy. High 
beneath the oak ceiling, in the yellow circle of a large 
crystal chandelier, a dim lamp was burning. A young 
Tartar soldier with an amputated arm, was raving and 
tossing his shaven head from side to side on his pillow. 
Dasha put an icebag against his brown forehead and 
threw back his blanket. She then went the round of all 
the beds and seated herself on a stool, her hands resting on 
her knees. “My heart has not been taught,” she thought; 
“I could only love the fine and beautiful, but my heart 
was never taught to pity and love the unlovable.” 

“Are you sleepy, Sister ?” a kindly voice asked. Dasha 
turned. From his bed, Semion’s bearded head was star¬ 
ing at her. 

“Why aren’t you sleeping?” Dasha asked. 

“I had a sleep in the day.” 

“Does your arm ache?” 

“It’s stopped now . . . Sister?” 

“Yes ?” 

“Your face looks weary; you must be dying for sleep. 
Why not lie down for a bit? I’ll keep an eye here and 
will call you, if necessary.” 

“But I’m not sleepy, Semion.” 

“Have you got any one at the front?” 

“My sweetheart.” 

“God will take care of him.” 

“He is missing.” 

“Dear, dear!” Semion shook his head with a sigh. “I 
had a brother who was missing, but we got a letter from 

[ 220 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


him; he was taken prisoner. Is your sweetheart a nice 
young man?” 

‘‘Very.” 

“What a pity! I wonder if I’ve heard of him? Tell 
me his name.” 

“Ivan Ilyitch Teliegin.” 

“Why, I have heard of him! Wait a moment. I have. 
He’s been taken prisoner. I swear he has. What regi¬ 
ment was he in?” 

“The Kasansky.” 

“That’s the man ! He’s been taken prisoner. He’s alive, 
thank God. Such a nice fellow. Never mind. Sister; 
have patience, my child. We will soon beat the Germans. 
Our boys tell us they’ve got nothing left to eat. When 
the snow melts, the war will end. We shall have peace. 
Have patience. You will bear him children yet, mark my 
word.” 

The tears rose in Dasha’s throat as she listened. She 
knew that Semion was merely inventing it all, that he 
did not know Ivan Ilyitch, but she felt grateful. Sud¬ 
denly she bent down and burst into tears. Semion shifted 
about in his bed and said softly, annoyed with himself: 

“Dear, dear, what have I done?” 

Dasha rose quickly, pulled out her handkerchief from 
her apron, and quickly wiped her eyes, saying: 

“Lie down, Semion, and go to sleep. If the doctor 
comes, he’ll be angry.” 

Sitting in the ante-room with her face pressed against 
the back of her chair, Dasha reflected that bad and in¬ 
different as she was, she had been received with love and 
welcomed. Her softened heart felt an instant pity for the 
sick and sleeping men. And in her pity, with a poignant 
clearness, she could suddenly see Ivan Ilyitch lying on a 
narrow bed in some barrack and sleeping and breathing 

[ 221 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


just like these men, and how a sweet dream had brought 
a sad smile to his lips. . . . How dear and kindred she 
felt him to be! 

Dasha moaned. She got up and began to pace the room. 
Suddenly the telephone rang. Dasha started and took up 
the receiver. The loud, jarring noise sounded strange in 
that sleeping stillness. More wounded had probably come 
in by the night train. 

“Hullo!” she called and her heart began to beat vio¬ 
lently. “Heavens! is that you, Katia? Katia? Is that 
you, my dear? ...” 


[222 ] 



XVIII 


“So here we are together again, girls/’ said Nikolai 
Ivanovitch, drawing down his leather coat over his stom¬ 
ach, and taking Ekaterina Dmitrievna by the chin, he 
kissed her soundly on the lips. “Good morning, my dear. 
How did you sleep?” Passing Dasha’s chair, he kissed 
her hair. “She and I are inseparable now, Katia. She’s 
a splendid girl.” 

He sat down at the table, which was covered with a 
clean, coloured cloth. He drew a china egg-cup towards 
himself and cut off the top of the egg in it with his 
knife. 

“Fancy, Katia, I’ve got to like eggs in the English fash¬ 
ion, with a little mustard and butter. You should try it; 
it’s very nice. In Germany you are allowed only two 
eggs a month. How does that strike you ?” 

He opened his large mouth and laughed in a self-satis¬ 
fied way. “They say that children there are being born 
without skin. Bismarck used to say, ‘We must live^ at 
peace with Russia/ but they did not heed him and scorned 
us, so now they’ve got to have two eggs a month.” 

“It’s prefectly horrible!” said Ekaterina Dmitrievna, 
raising her eyebrows. “When children are born without 
skin, it is horrible whether they are German children or 
others.” 

“I am sorry, Katia, but you are talking nonsense.” 

“I only know that when it’s kill, kill, kill every day, 
it is so horrible that you don’t want to live.” 

“But what can you do, my dear? The time has come 

[ 223 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


for us to bear the burden of the state on our own shoul¬ 
ders. So far, we have only been reading Elovaiskys who 
tell us of peasants fighting for the country on some Ku- 
lick and Borodinsky fields. We used to think the state 
a very nice and comfortable thing. You liked to see the 
huge stretch that Russia made on the map. But now 
that we have to give a percentage of life to safeguard the 
integrity of the thing on the map, coloured in green across 
Europe and Asia, we don’t like it at all. When you tell 
me that our state organism is a bad one, there I agree 
with you. When I go out to die for the state, I have a 
right to ask you who are sending me to death, are you 
armed with a statesman’s wisdom? Can I shed my blood 
for my country without misgivings? I know, my dear 
Katia, that the government has not got rid of its old evil 
habit of treating the Unions of Zemstvos and Towns with 
suspicion, but it is perfectly clear that without public 
support, they are unable to carry on. We first seize on 
a finger and then take the whole hand. I am very op¬ 
timistic.” Nikolai Ivanovitch rose from the table, took 
a box of matches from the fireplace and while standing, 
lighted a cigarette, throwing the burnt match into his 
egg-shell. “Blood will not have been shed in vain. At 
the end of the war, in place of brutal officials and the 
Tsar’s bureaucrats, you will have our public-spirited 
worker. What ‘Zemla and Volia’ failed to do and the 
revolutionaries and the Marxists, will be accomplished by 
the war. Good-bye, girls.” 

He pulled down his coat and went out. The back view 
of him was like a woman disguised. 

Ekaterina Dmitrievna sighed, went into her own room 
and sat down to her knitting. Dasha sat on the arm of 
her chair and put her arm about her sister’s shoulders. 
Both were attired in black, high-necked dresses and, sit- 

[ 224 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


ting quietly and silently as they were, the resemblance 
between them was striking. Outside the window, a steady 
snow fell and the bright snowy light was reflected on the 
walls of the room. Dasha pressed her cheek against her 
sister's hair, which smelt strongly of some unfamiliar 
perfume. 

“How did you live all this time, Katia ?” she asked; 
“you have not told me anything.” 

“What is there to tell, Kitten? I wrote to you.” 

“I don’t understand, Katia. You are handsome and 
charming and kind; I don’t know any woman as nice as 
you; yet I have never seen you happy once. Why is it ? 
Your eyes are always sad.” 

“I must have a sad heart.” 

“I’m speaking seriously.” 

“I always wonder at it myself. I suppose when a 
person has everything, he can be really unhappy. I’ve 
got a good husband, a nice sister, freedom, youth, every¬ 
thing. Yet, when I was in Paris it seemed to me that 
I was living in a glass jar and suffocating. I only realized 
it there. ‘Heavens!’ I used to think. ‘If I could only 
live in some quiet little town and look after the fowls 
and the kitchen garden and run round to a friend in the 
evening on the river. It is so long since I’ve walked 
barefoot on the ground. I don’t love any one; I can’t, 
I suppose. I am like a person dead. My life is fin¬ 
ished, Dasha.” 

“What nonsense you are talking.” 

“I am a living being, but I live as in a mirage and I am 
myself but a ghost. I am only conscious of one thing. 
No matter how much you deck yourself out and exert 
yourself, you will have to die all the same. Today I feel 
desperate. I sometimes see a striped mattress, a slipping 

[ 225 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


sheet, a basin full of gall on the floor and myself lying 
dead and yellow and grey-haired. ...” 

Ekaterina Dmitrievna put down her knitting and gazed 
at the snow-flakes that fell in the calm stillness. Her 
blue eyes were transparent. In the distance, a flock of 
daws, looking like a cloud of dark leaves, were circling 
round a crooked, golden eagle on a Kremlin spire. 

“I remember getting up early one morning, Dasha. 
From my balcony I could see Paris in a blue mist and 
white and grey and blue smoke was rising everywhere. 
In the street were children with their books and women 
with baskets. The provision shops were being opened. 
It seemed so solid and lasting. I wanted to go down and 
mix with the crowd. I wanted to meet some man with 
kind eyes and put my head on his breast and say to him, 
‘Take me, love me,’ but when I got down to the big boule¬ 
vards, the town had already gone mad. Newspaper boys 
were rushing about and all over the place were crowds 
of excited people. In every one’s eyes there was fear of 
death and hatred. The war had begun. Since then I 
only hear of death, death, death. . . . What is there to 
live for?” 

“Katia?” Dasha said after a pause. 

“What is it, my dear?” 

“How do you and Nikolai get on?” 

“I can’t say. It seems we have forgiven each other. 
It’s three days now and he has been very kind to me. 
Who bothers about a woman’s trouble now? You may 
suflfer and go mad, and who cares? You may buzz 
about like a midge, but you will hardly hear the noise 
you are making. I envy old women. Things are so 
simple for them. Death is soon to come and they have 
only to prepare for it.” 

Dasha shifted in her seat. She gave several deep 

[226 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


sighs and took her arm from Katia’s shoulders. Ekate¬ 
rina Dmitrievna said gently: 

“Nikolai has told me that you are engaged. Is it 
true ? My poor dear !” 

She took Dasha’s hand and kissed it, then she laid 
it on her breast and began to caress it. “If you love 
him very much, there is nothing else in the world that 
you need.” 

Again the sisters were silent, gazing out of the win¬ 
dow at the falling snow. Down the street, among the 
snow-heaps, a group o«f military cadets filed by, slipping 
over the snow. They carried bath-brushes and clean 
linen under their arms, evidently on their way to the 
baths. They sang in chorus as they passed, to the ac¬ 
companiment of whistling: 

“Rise up, ye hawks, like (the eagle; cast your shadow 
forth. ...” 

“If Ivan Ilyitch has lost his arms or his legs,” Dasha 
said with a frown, “I will love him all the more. He 
must be happy, above everything.” 

i 


After a few days’ absence Dasha again began her work 
at the hospital. Ekaterina Dmitrievna remained alone 
in the flat, in which everything was strange to her. On 
the wall were two dull landscapes, depicting a hayrick, 
some thawing water and bare birch trees. Over the 
sofa in the drawing-room was an unfamiliar photograph 
of a plain woman, two boy cadets and a general in 
glasses. On a small stand in a corner lay a dusty bunch 
of feather-grass, brought long ago, no doubt, with some 
koumiss from the steppes. Ekaterina Dmitrievna made 
an attempt to go to the theatre, where veteran actors 

[227] 



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were playing Ostrovsky. She tried picture exhibitions 
and museums, but she found it all dull and colourless, 
only half alive, while she herself was no more than a 
shadow, wandering through a life long abandoned by 
every one. 

For hours she would sit at the window by the radi¬ 
ator, gazing out at tranquil, snowy Moscow, where a 
melancholy ringing of bells was borne through the soft 
air and the falling snow. It was a burial service of 
some one brought back from the front, no doubt. Her 
book would fall from her hands. What was the use of 
dreaming? Former dreams and former thoughts were 
wrong and futile now. 

The time flew quickly from morning paper to morn¬ 
ing paper. Ekaterina Dmitrievna perceived that every¬ 
body around her lived in the future only, in some im¬ 
aginable days of victory and peace. Everything that 
heightened people’s expectations was hailed with a wild 
joy and failures made them clench their teeth. People 
were distracted like maniacs. They caught eagerly at 
rumours, snatches of sentences, improbable news, grow¬ 
ing excited over newspaper phrases. And all the while 
you might have banged your head against a stone in 
the Theatre Square and no one would have paid any 
heed. 

Ekaterina Dmitrievna resolved to talk to her husband, 
and persuaded him to find her some work. Early in 
March she commenced work in the same hospital as 
Dasha. 

At first, just as Dasha, she felt a revulsion against 
the dirt and the suffering, but she managed to master 
herself and grew to take an interest in the work. This 
mastering of herself gave her pleasure. She felt the 
nearness of life around her; it was like a running stream 

[228 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


in the desert. She came to like the hard and dirty work 
and began to pity those for whom she did it. Once she 
said to Dasha: 

‘‘I wonder whose idea it was that we must live a 
special and refined life? At bottom, you and I are 
just women. What we want are simpler husbands, more 
children and to be nearer to the grass. . . .” 

During Passion Week, the sisters prepared for the 
sacrament at a church on the Rjevsky. Ekaterina Dmit¬ 
rievna took the hospital Easter cake to be blessed and 
they broke their fast at the hospital. Nikolai Ivano- 
vitch had a special meeting that night and he called for 
the sisters in a car at three o’clock in the morning. 
Ekaterina Dmitrievna declared that neither she nor 
Dasha was sleepy and asked to be taken for a drive. 
It was stupid, but the chauffeur was given a glass of 
brandy and they drove out to the' Holinsky Fields. 

There was a slight frost and the cheeks tingled with 
the cold. The sky was cloudless and a few bright stars 
shone here and there. The ice crunched beneath the 
wheels. Katia and Dasha were both in white shawls 
and grey coats and sat close together in the deep seat 
of the car. Nikolai Ivanovitch, who was sitting with 
the chauffeur, kept turning round to look at them. Both 
were dark-browed, dark-eyed and white. 

“Upon my word, I can’t tell which of you is my 
wife.” 

“You’ll never guess,” one of them replied, and both 
laughed. 

Above the huge, dark fields the edge of the sky began 
to turn green and in the distance was the dark outline 
of a wood. 

“One does want to love, Katia,” Dasha said. Ekate¬ 
rina Dmitrievna pressed her hand and her eyes filled with 

[229] 


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tears. Above the wood, in the watery green of the 
dawn, a large star shimmered. 

“I forgot to tell you, Katia,” said Nikolai Ivano- 
vitch, turning round in his seat, “our chief, Chumakov, 
has just come back and he tells us that the position in 
Galicia is very serious. The German firing is so ter¬ 
rific that whole regiments are wiped out. And as for 
us, we haven’t shells enough, if you please! The devil 
knows what’s the matter!” 

Katia did not reply; she merely raised her eyes to 
the stars. Dasha pressed her cheek against Katia’s 
shoulder. Nikolai Ivanovitch invoked the devil once 
again and told the chauffeur to turn back home. 

On the third day of the holidays, Ekaterina Dmitrievna 
began to feel ill and went to bed, not able to go to the 
hospital. 

It turned out that she had inflammation of the lungs. 


[230] 


XIX 


“What a mess we’re in, to be sure! It’s too horrible 
to think about!” 

“You’ve swelled yourself by the fire long enough. Go 
to sleep.” 

“What a mess, indeed! Russia is lost, brothers.” 

By the mud wall of a thatch-roofed shed, sheaf-like in 
shape, three soldiers were sitting round the smouldering 
fire. One of them had hung the strips of linen, which 
he wore in place of socks, to dry on a prop, and he 
kept watching to see that they did not steam; another was 
putting a patch on his pants, carefully drawing out the 
thread; the third was sitting cross-legged on the ground, 
his hands thrust into the deep pockets of his coat. He 
was pock-marked and long-nosed, had a thin, black beard 
and was staring at the fire with deep-sunk, wild eyes. 

“We’re betrayed in everything; that’s the condition 
we’re in,” he said quietly. “We no sooner turn the scale 
than we are ordered to retreat. We hear of Jews being 
hanged on trees, but treachery is safely lodged at the 
top.” 

“I’m sick of the war, but you won’t read that in the 
newspapers,” remarked the man who was drying the 
pieces of linen, as he carefully put a dry branch on the 
fire. “We advance and retreat and advance again, and so 
it goes on and we get back again to where we were. No 
result whatever,” he said with satisfaction. “We’ve 
strewn the place with muck. The women round about are 
all pregnant. It makes you sick.” 


[231] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


“The other day Ensign Jadov fastened on me,” the man 
patching the pants said, with a sneer, not raising his head. 
“That’s all very well. He’s so fed up that the devil 
gives him no peace. Why had I got holes in my pants, 
he began, and why was I not standing right? And it 
ended by his giving me a punch in the jaw.” 

“No rifles, nothing to fire with,” said the man who 
was drying the pieces of linen. “In our battery, they have 
only seven shells to the gun. That’s why they’ve noth¬ 
ing better to do than to smash us in the jaw.” 

The man patching looked up in surprise and shook his 
head. “Well, well!” 

“The whole people are in arms,” the dark man said. 
“They are taking men of forty-three. You could march 
through the world with such a force. Are we shirking? 
Let them do their part and we’ll do ours.” 

“True.” The man patching nodded approvingly. 

“Near Warsaw I saw a field,” the dark man continued, 
“with some five or six thousand Siberian shooters 
stretched on it. To come all the way to fall under the 
machine-guns! If you mow down rye, you gather it after¬ 
wards. At the military council in Warsaw they decide 
this and that and some general comes out instantly and 
away goes a telegram to Berlin. Don’t you see? Two 
Siberian corps marched straight from the station to that 
field to fall under the machine-guns. It’s no use your 
telling me that you were hit in the jaw. If I didn’t yoke 
the horse properly, my father used to hit me in the face. 
And he was right, too. I had to learn and to know fear. 
But why did they mow down the Siberian shooters like 
sheep? I will tell you, brothers. Russia is lost. We 
have been betrayed. And it was a peasant who betrayed. 
A man from my own village, Pokrovsky. He used to be 
a saddler. I won’t mention his name. He couldn’t read 

[ 232 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


and write, just as I can’t. He was a blackguard and a 
scoundrel, too lazy to work. 

“He used to steal horses and drag himself about the 
hermitages; was fond of women and vodka. And now 
he’s in Petersburg, like a Tsar. Ministers and generals 
and devils are whirling about him. The devil is in every¬ 
thing there. I heard that when a priest had his cassock 
pulled off, they found a tail underneath. And they put 
seed into the communion wine. While we’re being hacked 
about and thousands of us are lying in the grey earth, in 
Petersburg electric light is burning gaily all over the 
town. They eat and drink and every house has a ball 
going on. Women are naked too here. . . . Money has 
been brought from Germany in three submarines; I know 
that for a fact. I can’t raise my arm to cross myself for 
it’s as stiff as a stone.” 

He ceased suddenly. It was still and damp. The horses 
could be heard munching in the shed and one of them 
kicked loudly against the wall. A night-bird swept from 
the roof to the light and disappeared with a plaintive cry. 
Suddenly, from the distance, came a shriek that rent the 
sky; it grew nearer, like some vast monster, flying with 
incredible speed and tearing the darkness with its wing. 
The monster dropped and some way behind the shed, a 
shell burst and the ground shook. The horses tore at their 
halters. The man mending the pants, said cautiously: 

“What a stir!” 

“What a gun!” 

“Quiet.” 

All three raised their heads. In the starless sky, an¬ 
other sound grew and lingered, it seemed for a moment 
or two, and then, near this side of the shed, came the 
thunder of a second explosion. The cones fell from the 
fir trees and the ground trembled. The flight of a third 

[ 233 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


shell was heard. It came with a muffled, lingering sound, 
that was so terrible that the heart stopped. The dark 
man got up from the ground and backed away. Above, 
the sound swelled and flew like invisible lightning. There 
was a tearing noise and a black, fiery column of smoke 
and earth rose high. 

When the column had collapsed, of the spot where the 
men had been sitting round the fire, there remained noth¬ 
ing but a deep hole. Above the twisted wall of the shed, 
the straw roof sent up clouds of yellow smoke. A black, 
long-maned horse rushed out, snorting, from the flames 
and reared at the pines standing out of the darkness. 

From behind the peaked edge of the valley, the dawn 
peeped; guns roared; long worm-like rockets rose high 
and their fire, which fell slowly, lighted up the dark, damp 
earth. Thundering explosions followed each other. The 
enemy was getting ready to advance. 


[234] 


XX 


Not far from the shed, that evening, the officers of one 
of the companies of the Usolsky regiment had arranged 
a party in the officers’ dugout, in honour of Captain Tet- 
kin, who had been informed of the birth of a son. Deep 
beneath the ground, in a low dugout lighted up by sev¬ 
eral tallow candles stuck in a glass, at a table sat seven 
officers, a medical man and three nurses from a “flying” 
hospital. 

Much drink had been consumed. The happy father, 
Captain Tetkin, was asleep with his face buried in his 
arm and a dirty hand against his bald head. In the 
stuffy air and the spirit fumes and the soft light cast 
by the candles, the nurses seemed very pretty. They wore 
grey dresses and grey kerchiefs. One was called Mushka; 
she had curls on her temples, laughed incessantly, throw¬ 
ing back her head and exposing her white throat, at which 
two of her neighbors and two men sitting opposite, stared, 
heavy-eyed. Another, called Maria Ivanovna, was a stout 
girl with red cheeks, who sang gipsy ballads well. The 
audience was beside itself. The men banged the table 
and said, “Damn it, that was the life!” The third nurse 
was Elisaveta Kievna. The light from the candles quiv¬ 
ered in her eyes and her face shone white, seeming like a 
white patch emerging from the smoke. To one of her 
neighbours, Ensign Jadov, it appeared terribly beautiful. 
He was a broad-shouldered man, red-haired and clean¬ 
shaven, with a crooked smile and bright, transparent eyes. 
He sat bolt upright, his belt pulled tight, drinking heavily 

[235] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


and growing paler. When Mushka, the black-haired, 
dropped asleep like a sack and Maria Ivanovna had taken 
up her guitar and wiped her face with a crumpled pocket- 
handkerchief and stuck out her double chin and begun 
to sing in a deep voice, “In the steppes of Moldavia was 
I born/’ Jadov’s straight-cut thin lips smiled slowly and 
he poured himself out another glass of spirits. 

Elisaveta Kievna stared at his clean-shaven face with¬ 
out a wrinkle with a feeling of unutterable sadness. 

He entertained her with decent conversation and among 
other things told her that a certain Captain Martinov in 
his regiment was reputed to be a fatalist. In fact, when 
he had had a glass of brandy, he would go up at night 
to the wire defences of the enemy trenches and abuse the 
Germans in four different languages. A few days ago 
he had paid for his vanity with a wound in his stomach. 
Elisaveta Kievna sighed and remarked that Captain Mar¬ 
tinov was a hero. Jadov smiled. 

“There are vain men and fools, but there are no 
heroes.” 

“But when you go out to an attack, isn’t that heroism?” 

“You don’t go to the attack, in the first place; you are 
forced to go. And the men who go are cowards. Of 
course, there are men who will risk their lives without 
being forced to, but these are men who have an organic 
desire to kill.” Jadov drummed his fingers on the table. 

“You mean, degenerates.” 

“Not degenerate, by any means. Men, if you like, who 
are at the height of human consciousness.” 

He rose lightly, took a box of sweets from the other 
end of the table and offered it to Elisaveta Kievna. 

“No, thank you,” she said, feeling her whole body grow 
limp. 

“And you? Tell me.” 

[ 236 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


“What about me?” he said sharply. “Yesterday, I 
met a Jew behind a shed. Would you like to hear? 
Would it be pleasant or otherwise? What utter non¬ 
sense !” 

He put a cigarette in his mouth and struck a match. 
His flat fingers were firm, but the cigarette did not come 
near the flame and remained unlighted. 

“1 am sorry, I am drunk,” he said, throwing away the 
match, which had burned down to his finger-nails. “Let 
us go into the air.” 

Elisaveta Kievna rose, as though in sleep, and followed 
him to the aperture leading out of the dugout. Lively, 
drunken voices called after them and Maria Ivanovna 
struck up her guitar and sang in a bass voice, “The 
night heaved with the triumph of passion.” 

Outside there was a strong smell of decay and the 
night was dark and still. Jadov walked quickly over the 
damp grass, his hands thrust into his pockets. Elisaveta 
Kievna followed a little behind him and while feeling 
immeasurably offended at this, she did not cease to smile. 
Suddenly, Jadov stopped and asked abruptly: 

“Well, and what now?” 

Her ears burned. Controlling a spasm in her throat, 
she replied in a scarcely audible voice: 

“I don’t know.” 

“Come.” He turned towards a dark, high-roofed shed, 
but after a few paces, he stopped and took her hand. It 
was like ice. 

“I am made like a god,” he announced with unexpected 
passion. “I can break a twenty-kopeck piece. I see 
through people like a glass. ... I hate them.” He 
hesitated as though trying to recollect something and 
stamped his foot. “All this laughing and singing and 
frightened talk is hateful. They are like worms writhing 

[237 1 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


in warm manure. They see only as far as my feet. I 
will crush them. . . . Do you hear ? I don’t love you; I 
can’t ever love you. . . . Don’t flatter yourself. . . . 
But I need you. ... I hate this feeling of dependence. 
. . . You ought to understand. ...” He put his arms 
under her elbows and pulled her violently towards him¬ 
self, pressing his dry, fiery lips against her temple. 

She made a motion to free herself, but he held her so 
firmly that her bones cracked. She dropped her head and 
hung heavily on his arm. 

“You are not like the others, not like every one else,” 
he said. “I will teach you. ...” Suddenly, he stopped 
and raised his head. A sharp, piercing sound grew in the 
darkness. 

“Damn!” Jadov hissed. 

A shell exploded in the distance. Elisaveta Kievna 
tried to free herself, but Jadov held her close. 

“Let me go!” she said desperately. 

A second shell burst. Jadov was still muttering some¬ 
thing when close to the shed, a black, fiery column flew 
high, and with a tearing explosion, hot bundles of straw 
shot out. 

Elisaveta Kievna wrenched herself free. She fell and 
rising with difficulty, rushed to the dugout, deafened as 
she was. The younger officers had rushed out of the dug- 
out and seeing the flaming shed, began to run, some to the 
left, towards the copse where the trenches were, others 
to the right, to the way of communication, leading to the 
bridge fortifications. 

From the other side of the river, far beyond the hills, 
the German batteries boomed. The firing came from two 
directions; from the right they fired at the bridge, from 
the left at the communication trench leading to a farm, 
which had not long been occupied on that side of the 

[ 238 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


river by the 6th company of the Usolsky regiment. They 
were firing, too, at the Russian batteries, which kept up 
a feeble reply. 

Elisaveta Kievna could see Jadov, without his cap and 
with his hands in his pockets, walking straight across the 
field to the machine-gun. And suddenly, a black and 
flaming bush stood out on the place where he had been. 
Elisaveta Kievna shut her eyes. When she opened them 
again, she saw Jadov walking leftwards, his elbows mov¬ 
ing in their usual way. Captain Tetkin, who was stand¬ 
ing by Elisaveta Kievna with his field-glasses, exclaimed 
angrily: 

“I told them we didn’t want the damned farm! And 
now see the way they’ve smashed the passage, the swine!” 
And again he held up his field-glasses. “They’re firing 
straight at the farm, the swine! The 6th company is 
lost!” He turned away and scratched hard at the back 
of his bare neck. “Shlapkin !” 

“Yes, sir,” replied a big-nosed, short man in a Cau¬ 
casian cap. 

“Did you get on to the farm?” 

“The communications are cut.” 

“Tell the 7th company to send reinforcements to the 
farm.” 

“Yes, sir,” Shlapkin replied, respectfully taking his 
hand from his cap. He walked away a few paces and 
stopped. 

“Ensign Shlapkin!” 

“Yes, sir.” 

“Do as you’re told.” 

“Yes, sir.” Shlapkin walked on a few paces further, 
then bent his head and began to dig the ground with 
his cane. 

“Ensign Shlapkin!” 


[ 239 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


“Yes, sir.” 

“Don’t you understand the human tongue?” 

“I understand right enough.” 

“Give the order to the 7th company. But you can tell 
them on your own account that they needn’t carry it out. 
They are not fools enough to send men there now. Let 
them send some fifteen men to the crossing to return fire. 
And send word to the division that the 8th company is 
gallantly forcing the passage. We’ll show their losses 
from the 6th company. Go.” 

When Elisaveta asked him to let her go to the trenches, 
he snapped at her. 

“You clear out of here, young woman; go to the devil’s 
own mother. Firing will soon begin. I say, doctor, 
don’t gape! Take your people away!” 

Just then a shell hissed and struck a tree some twenty 
paces off. 


[240 ] 


XXI 


Jadov was lying at the crack of a pill-box, not able to 
tear himself away eagerly watching the fighting through 
his field-glasses. The pill-box was placed on the slope of 
a wooded hill. At his feet the inclining river wound. To 
the right rose clouds of smoke from the bridge which had 
just caught fire. Behind him, in a grassy bog, was the 
broken line of trenches, occupied by the men of the Usol- 
sky regiment. To the left of them, a stream wound among 
the stones and fell into the river; a little more to the 
left, by the stream, the three buildings of the farm were 
blazing and behind the latter, in trenches made into an 
angle, were the men of the 6th company. Three hun¬ 
dred paces away the German lines began, which stretched 
to the right into the wooded hills. 

The flames of the two fires made the river turn a 
muddy purple and the water boiled from the numerous 
falling shells and shot up in fountains, surrounded by 
red and yellow clouds of steam. 

The hottest firing was directed on the farm. Above 
the burning buildings, bursting shrapnel flashed red and 
on either side of the angle of broken trenches, shaggy, 
black columns rose high. On the other side of the 
stream, among the bushes and grass, the flash of rifle 
firing could be seen. 

Boom! boom! 

The air shook with the bursting of heavy shells. Ping! 
ping! the shrapnel beat on the river, on the fields and 
on the trenches of the 2nd, 3rd and 4th companies. Boom! 

[ 241 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


i 


boom! rolled a thudering noise from the hills, where, 
like white lightning, flashed twelve German batteries. 
Hiss! hiss! our answering shells whistled through the 
air to the hills. 

The noise was ear-splitting and fury rose like a lump 
beneath the heart. 

Thus it continued for a long, long time. Jadov looked 
at his illuminated watch; it was half-past two. It was 
getting light and the attack must be expected soon. 

And in fact, the thunder of the artillery increased; 
the water in the river boiled more fiercely and the 
shells beat on the crossings and hills on this side. Now 
and again the ground would shake and clay and stones 
would fall from the walls and ceiling of the pill-box. 
But it grew quiet in the yard of the burning farm. 
Suddenly, from the distance, aslant the river, flew the 
flaming ribbons of dozens of rockets and the earth 
lighted up as from the sun. When they were extin¬ 
guished, it was quite dark for some minutes. The Ger¬ 
mans got out of their trenches and set off to attack. 

In the dim light of the dawn, Jadov at last dis¬ 
tinguished moving figures coming over the field, now in 
a bunch together, now with some getting ahead. Not a 
single shot came from the farm to meet them. Jadov 
turned into the pill-box and shouted: 

“The strap!” 

The machine-gun trembled as with a devilish rage 
and out spat lead, poisoning the air with vicious fumes. 
The figures moved faster over the field, some falling 
down. Soon the field was full of patches of advancing 
Germans. The foremost of them ran up to the shat¬ 
tered trenches of the 6th company. Faster and faster 
a crowd gathered at this spot. 

The fight for the farm was an insignificant part of 

[ 242 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


a big battle that was raging on a front of some sev¬ 
eral hundred versts, which had cost both sides about a 
milliard of troubles and several hundred thousand lives. 

The battle was senseless, because the loss of troops 
was made good; a new mobilization was carried out, 
new shells were made, a new batch of paper money 
issued. Several towns were merely destroyed and hun¬ 
dreds of villages burned to the ground. And once more, 
both sides began to make ready, as the saying was at 
the time, to snatch the initiative from the hands of the 
enemy. 

There was no sense in the fight for the farm. The 
Russians had occupied it about a fortnight back to pro¬ 
vide themselves with a jumping-off ground in the event 
of an advance across the river. The Germans resolved 
to take it in order to bring their observation point nearer 
to the river. Neither the one nor the other objective 
had any importance, except to the commanders of the 
German and Russian divisions, who had set it down 
in their wisely thought out strategic plans for the spring 
campaign. 

The commander of the Russian division. General 
Dobrov, who, six months earlier, with the permission 
of the All Highest, had changed his former name to 
the present one, was sitting at a game of preference at 
the time when the information was received of the Ger¬ 
man attack on the sector occupied by the Usolsky regi¬ 
ment. 

The general left his game of preference and with the 
senior officers and two adjutants went into the draw¬ 
ing-room, where on a table, lay a topographical map. 
He had already been informed from the front of the 
firing on the crossing and bridge. The general realized 
that the Germans were bent on taking the farm, that is, 

[243 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 

the very spot on which he had built his famous plan for 
an offensive, approved by the corps staff and submitted 
for approval to the army commander. The German 
attack upset the whole of his plan. 

Every moment telephone messages confirmed the dan¬ 
ger. The general took the glasses from his large nose 
and toying with them, said quietly but firmly: 

'‘Very well, I won’t yield a span of the position occu¬ 
pied by my trusted troops.” 

Instantly telephone messages were sent about the 
measures to be taken to defend the farm. The 238th 
Kundrinsky third-class regiment, in the reserve, were 
ordered to send a strength of two battalions to the cross¬ 
ing to reinforce Tetkin. Just then word was received 
from the commander of a heavy battery that there were 
not enough shells, that one gun had been put out of ac¬ 
tion and that to reply on a requisite scale to the terrific 
fire of the enemy was absolutely impossible. 

At this the general said, looking severely at those pres¬ 
ent : “Very well. When the shells give out we will fight 
with side arms.” And from the pocket of his grey coat 
with red lapels, he pulled out a snow-white handker¬ 
chief, shook it, wiped his glasses and bent his head over 
the map. 

Just then a young adjutant appeared in the doorway, a 
cavalryman in a dark khaki coat, which fitted like a 
glove, with leather belt drawn tight and high in the 
waist, and wide breeches. 

“Your Excellency,” he said with a scarcely perceptible 
smile about his handsome, youthful mouth, “Captain 
Tetkin has sent word that the 8th Company is gallantly 
defending the crossing, notwithstanding the destructive 
fire of the enemy.” 

The general looked at the officer over the top of his 
[ 244 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


glasses, made a munching movement with his clean- 
* shaven lips and said: “Very well.” 

Yet, notwithstanding the cheerful tone, the news from 
the front became more and more disconcerting. The 
238th Kundrinsky regiment had reached the crossing and 
entrenched. The 8th company continued its gallant at¬ 
tacks, but the position did not improve. The commander 
of a mortar division. Captain Islambekov, sent word that 
two of his guns were out of action, and that he had few 
shells. The commander of the first battalion of the Usol- 
skv regiment, Colonel Borozdin, announced that owing 
to the exposed position, the 2nd, 3rd and 4th companies 
sustained heavy losses in men. He therefore asked to 
be allowed to attack the daring foe, or to retreat to the 
edge of the wood. There was no information from the 
6th company, which occupied the farm. 

At half-past three in the morning a military council 
was summoned. General Dobrov announced that he 
would march at the head of his trusted troops, but would 
not yield an inch of the occupied position. At that mo¬ 
ment information arrived that the farm was taken and 
that the 6th company had perished to a man. The gen¬ 
eral clenched his batiste handkerchief in his fist and shut 
his eyes. The head of staff, Colonel Svetchin, shrugged 
his fat shoulders, the blood rushing to his fat, black- 
bearded face. He said in a precise, hoarse voice: 

“Your Excellency, I have always taken the liberty of 
telling you that the change of position to the right bank 
was risky. We can put two, three or four battalions on 
that crossing, but even if we capture the farm, it will be 
very difficult to hold it. I am against any further fight¬ 
ing for the farm.” 

“We need the farm—we must have it; we will have it, 
Colonel,” said General Dobrov, the sweat appearing on 

[ 245 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


his nose. “It is not a question of ambition, but with the 
loss of the jumping-off ground the whole of my carefully 
prepared plan for an offensive is reduced to nought.” 

Colonel Svetchin protested, turning still redder in the 
face. 

“Your Excellency, it is physically impossible for the 
troops to cross the river under the terrific firing without 
proper support from our artillery, and you know the 
artillery has nothing to support them with.” 

To this the general replied: 

“Very well. In that case, inform my troops that on 
the other side of the river St. George crosses are hanging 
on the barbed wire. I know my men.” 

After these words, which should be recorded in his¬ 
tory, the general rose, and toying with his glasses in his 
short fingers, held behind his back, he looked out of the 
window, whence he could see a damp birch tree, stand¬ 
ing in a field, in the soft blue morning mist. A flock of 
sparrows were seated on its thin, light-green branches. 
They twittered anxiously and nervously, then rose sud¬ 
denly and flew away. And the whole of the misty field, 
with the dim outlines of the trees, was already touched 
by the slanting, golden rays of the sun. 

At sunrise the fighting ceased. The Germans occu¬ 
pied the farm and the left bank of the stream. From 
the whole of the position in Russian hands, there re¬ 
mained only the hollow on the right side of the stream 
where the first company was entrenched. The whole of 
the day a half-hearted cross-firing went on, but it was 
clear that the 1st company was in danger of envelop¬ 
ment; it had no direct communication with this side 
of the bank, owing to the destruction of the bridge. 
The most sensible thing, it would seem, would have 
been to clear the bog that night. 

[ 246 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


But in the afternoon the commander of the 1st bat¬ 
talion, Colonel Borozdin, received an order to prepare 
that night to ford the stream to the bog, to reinforce the 
position of the 1st company. Captain Tetkin was or¬ 
dered to collect a strength of the 5th and 7th companies 
below the farm and to cross on pontoons. The 3rd bat¬ 
talion of the Usolsky regiment, which was in the reserve, 
had to occupy the position of the attackers, The 238th 
Kundrinsky regiment had to cross at the narrow place 
by the burnt crossing and to strike at the front. 

The order was a serious one, the disposition clear. 
The farm was to be surrounded from the right by the 
1st and from the left by the 2nd battalion, while the re¬ 
serve Kundrinsky regiment was to engage the attention 
and fire of the enemy. The attack was timed to begin 
after midnight. 

At dusk Jadov placed the machine-guns on the cross¬ 
ing, taking one of them on a boat with the greatest 
caution to a small island of some hundred square feet, 
which was overgrown with osiers. There Jadov re¬ 
mained. The position was dangerous, but convenient. 

The whole day the Russian batteries kept up a half¬ 
hearted fire, the Germans replying in the same way. At 
sunset the artillery firing ceased, only here and there on 
the river solitary rifle shots could be heard. At mid¬ 
night, in silence, there began a movement of troops from 
three places at once. To engage the attention of the 
enemy, the units of the Kundrinsky regiment, which 
were in position five miles higher up the river, opened a 
lively firing. The Germans were put on the alert, but 
were silent. Parting the osier branches, which were cov¬ 
ered with cobwebs, Jadov watched the crossing. On the 
right, a yellow star hung motionless above the jagged 
hills and its dim reflection trembled on the glossy, convex 

[ 247 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


surface of the water. This line of light was broken by 
dark objects cutting across it. On islets and shallows, 
running figures could be seen. Some ten of them walked 
with a subdued splashing in the water to the chest, their 
rifles and cartridge cases held in uplifted hands. These 
were the Kundrinsky men fording across. 

Suddenly, from the side of the river, a rapid firing 
began. Shells hissed and flew and with a metallic sound, 
shrapnel burst high above the river. Each explosion 
lighted up the white, bearded faces held out of the water. 
The shallows swarmed with running men. Boom! 
boom! boom! a fresh round began. Cries could be heard. 
Rockets, with their blinding fires, flew up over the whole 
sky. The Russian batteries thundered. The current 
brought a struggling man to Jadov’s feet. “My head— 
my head is hit!” he repeated in a choking voice, catching 
at the osiers. Jadov ran across to the other side of 
the island. In the distance, pontoons filled with men, 
moved across the river and the units which had crossed 
already could be seen running up the field. Instantly, 
just as yesterday, over river and crossings and hills, 
came a deafening, blinding hurricane of fire. The boil¬ 
ing water seemed full of writhing worms. Through black 
and yellow clouds of smoke, among the water posts, men 
crawled and screamed and struggled. Those who had 
reached the other side were crawling up the bank, others, 
behind them, clutched them by the legs. From the back 
Jadov’s machine-gun pealed. Russian shells burst in 
front. The two companies, led by Captain Tetkin, were 
subjected to the cross-firing from the farm. The ad¬ 
vance units of the Kundrinsky regiment, which had lost 
half its strength at the crossing, as it turned out after¬ 
wards, would have gone on with bayonets, but were un¬ 
able to hold out and lay down by the barbed wire. From 

[ 248 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 

the stream, in mass formation, came the men of the 
1st battalion. The Germans rushed out of their 
trenches. 

Jadov was lying by the machine-gun, clutching the 
wildly agitated lock and sending forth a level fire at the 
grassy slope at the back of the German trenches, down 
which men ran in twos and threes and then in larger 
groups. Invariably, they all stumbled and fell over on 
their sides. 

“Fifty-eight, sixty,” Jadov counted. A wretched 
figure rose, clutched its head and dragged itself down 
the slope. Jadov carefully adjusted the aim of the ma¬ 
chine gun and the figure dropped to its knees and fell. 
“Sixty-one.” Suddenly a blinding, burning light flashed 
before his eyes. Jadov felt himself rise in the air and a 
sharp pain tore at his arm. 

The farm and all the trenches adjoining it were cap¬ 
tured and some two hundred Germans were taken pris¬ 
oner. At daybreak the artillery fire on both sides ceased. 
They began to collect the killed and wounded. When 
searching the islets the ambulance men found in a 
broken osier bush, a machine-gun, turned upside down 
and in the sand near by a private, with the back of his 
head blown away. Some twenty feet away, on the other 
side of the island, Jadov lay with his legs in the water. 
He groaned when they lifted him. From his sleeve, 
matted with blood, a piece of bone projected. 

When Jadov was taken to the “flying” hospital, the 
doctor called to Elisaveta Kievna. “They have brought 
your hero. Get him on the operating table at once.” 
Jadov lay unconscious, with swollen nose and blackened 
mouth. When his shirt was removed Elisaveta Kievna 
saw on his broad, white chest a tattoo of monkeys clutch¬ 
ing their tails. During the operation he ground his teeth 

[ 249 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


and his face was convulsed. When the torture was over 
and he had been bandaged he opened his eyes. Elisaveta 
Kievna bent over him. 

“Sixty-one,” he said. 

He continued to wander till morning, when he fell 
fast asleep. 

Elisaveta Kievna asked permission to take him her¬ 
self to the big hospital attached to the division staff. 


[ 250 ] 


XXII 


Dasha went into the dining-room and stopped by the 
table. Nikolai Ivanovitch and Dmitri Stepanovitch, who 
had been summoned from Samara by urgent telegram 
three days back, were both silent. Holding her white 
shawl to her chin, Dasha looked at her father’s red face 
and unkempt hair as he sat cross-legged, at Nikolai 
Ivanovitch’s drooping, swollen eyelids, and dropped into 
a chair. With eyes full of tears she gazed out of the 
window into the twilight, at the bright, narrow crescent 
of the moon. 

Dmitri Stepanovitch was smoking and scattering ash 
over his rough waistcoat. Nikolai Ivanovitch, with his fin¬ 
gers, was toying with a little heap of crumbs on the table¬ 
cloth. They sat silent for a long time. At last Nikolai 
Ivanovitch said in a choking voice: 

“Why has every one left her? It isn’t right.” 

“You sit still, I’ll go,” Dasha said, rising. She was 
past feeling pain or fatigue. “Father, give her another 
injection,” she said, covering her mouth with her shawl. 
Dmitri Stepanovitch snorted loudly and threw the end 
of his cigarette over his shoulder. The floor about him 
was strewn with cigarette ends. 

“Father, do give her another injection, I implore you!” 

At this Nikolai Ivanovitch exclaimed in an irritable 
theatrical voice: 

“She can’t exist merely on camphor! She will die, 
Dasha.” 


[251 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


Dasha turned quickly towards him. Her tears were 
instantly dried. 

“Don’t you dare say that!” she cried. “Don’t you dare! 
She won’t die!” 

Nikolai Ivanovitch’s yellow face twitched. He turned 
to the window and also gazed at the clear, fine crescent 
of the moon in the blue void. 

“What misery!” he said. “If she goes ... I 
can’t. ...” 

Dasha passed through the drawing-room on tiptoe, 
looked once more at the blue window, at the eternal, icy 
cold without and slipped into Katia’s bedroom, where a 
night-light burned dimly. 

At the bottom of the room, on a yellow wooden bed¬ 
stead, on the pillows, just as immovable as before, lay 
the small face, with the dry, dark hair thrown back and 
the palm of a hand below it. Dasha dropped on her 
knees by the bed. Katia’s breathing was scarcely audi¬ 
ble. After a while, she asked in a soft, plaintive voice: 

“What is the time?” 

“Eight, Katia.” 

Katia breathed and asked again, plaintively: 

“What is the time ?” 

She had repeated the question the whole of the day. 
Her half-transparent face was calm, her eyes shut. . . . 
It was such a long, long time that she had been walking 
over a soft carpet, down a long narrow corridor. The 
walls and the ceiling, the whole of it was yellow. To 
the right, from the high, dusty windows, a yellow, tor¬ 
menting light poured in. To the left were many flat 
doors. On the other side of them, if they were to open, 
was the end of the earth, a chasm. In the darkness, 
deep down, hung the red crescent of the moon. As in a 

[ 252 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


dream, Katia was walking slowly, slowly past these doors 
and dusty windows. In front of her stretched the long, 
flat corridor, bathed in yellow light. It was close and 
deadly despair was wafted from each door. When will 
it end, oh, God? At the end she knew was a watery, 
greenish meadow, with watery branches hanging to the 
ground. It seemed to her she could almost hear the 
birds sing. She must stop and listen. . . . No, she could 
not hear them. . . . And from the other side of the doors, 
from the darkness, a humming began, a slow, low sound, 
like the spring of a hanging clock. . . . That misery! . . . 
If only she could wake . . . say some simple, human 
thing. . . . 

And again she asked persistently, as though complain¬ 
ing: “What is the time?” 

“Katia, what do you want to know?” 

“Good. Dasha was there.” . . . And again the soft 
closeness and the corridor carpet stretching beneath the 
feet and the hard, stifling light pouring in from the 
dusty windows and in the distance the humming of a 
clock spring. . . . 

“If only I didn’t hear ... or see, or feel. ... If I could 
lie down and curl up. ... If only the end would come. . .. 
But Dasha disturbs me; she won’t let me lose conscious¬ 
ness. . . . She holds my head, kisses me and mumbles and 
mumbles. Something vital comes from her and enters 
my hollow, light body. . . . How unpleasant. . . . How 
can I tell her that it is easier to die than to feel this 
living force? ... If she would only let me go.” 

“I love you, Katia, I love you, do you hear me?” 

“She won’t let me go. She is sorry for me. I mustn’t, 
I suppose. The child will be left quite alone.” 

“Dasha!” 


[ 253 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


“What is it? What is it?” 

“I won’t die, I shall get better.” 

That must be her father approaching, for he smells 
of tobacco. He is bending over her and putting back the 
blanket. The needle enters her breast with a sweet pain. 
A soothing, restful feeling flows through her veins. The 
walls of the yellow corridor tremble and part; she can 
feel the cool air. Dasha is caressing her hand, which is 
lying on the counterpane; she is kissing it and feels 
warm. Another moment and her body will dissolve in 
the sweet darkness of sleep. But again, hard, yellow 
little demons swim before her eyes. Chirp, chirp. Self- 
satisfied, they lead their own existence and multiply and 
build that cursed, stifling corridor. . . . 

“Dasha, Dasha, don’t let me go there!” 

Dasha puts her arms about her head. She has lain 
down beside her on the pillow, is pressing against her, 
living and strong, and some brutal, burning force ema¬ 
nating from her says, “Live!” 

The corridor is now there stretching before her; she 
must get up and walk along with a hundred-pound 
weight on each foot. She cannot lie down. Dasha has 
seized and lifted her and says: “Come!” 

Thus, for three days Katia fought with death. She 
felt Dasha’s passionate will constantly. Had it not been 
for Dasha she would long since have exhausted her 
strength and sunk. 

For the whole evening and the night of the third day 
Dasha did not leave Katia’s bedside. The sisters seemed 
to have but one being; they felt the same pain and were 
animated by one will. In the morning Katia began to 
perspire and turned over on her side. Her breathing was 
scarcely audible. Dasha called her father in alarm. 

[254 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 

They resolved to wait. At seven o’clock Katia sighed 
and turned over on her other side. The crisis had passed. 
Katia began to return to life. 

For the first time in three days Dasha fell asleep in 
a chair by the bed. When he heard that Katia was out 
of danger, Nikolai Ivanovitch seized Dmitri Stepanovitch 
by his rough waistcoat and sobbed aloud. 

The new day began happily. It was warm and sunny, 
and they all seemed good to one another. A white lilac 
bush was sent in from the florist’s, and was put into the 
drawing-room. Dasha was conscious that she had 
snatched Katia from death with her own hands and that 
she was very near herself to that yellow, thorny doorway 
leading to darkness, from the end of which a cold eternal 
blast seemed to come out of the depths. There was noth¬ 
ing on earth dearer than life. She realized this well. 


At the end of May Nikolai Ivanovitch moved Ekaterina 
Dmitrievna into the country, near Moscow, where he had 
taken a wooden house with two verandas, one facing 
a white birchwood of ever-changing green shadows, the 
other on a slope looking west over rolling fields. 

Every evening Dasha and Nikolai Ivanovitch got out of 
the train on to the primitive platform and walked over 
the marshy fields. Overhead the midges swarmed, like 
two clouds of living dust. Then they had to walk uphill 
and Nikolai Ivanovitch would usually stop, for the seem¬ 
ing purpose of admiring the sunset, and would say, 
panting: 

“How beautiful! damn it!” 

Over the darkening, rolling valley, covered here with 
corn, there with leafy nut and birch copses, shadows lay, 
the shadows that come at sunset, purple and still and 

l 255 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


sterile. In the long forks between them, the evening 
glow was reflected dimly. Some little way below, in 
the crook of the stream, a fork of orange could be 
seen. The frogs croaked merrily. On the flat fields were 
the darkening forms of hayricks and village roofs. A 
yellow tongue of flame from a campfire shot up on the 
bank of a shallow pond. Out there, somewhere beyond 
the slope and the high hedges, lived the Tushinsky thief. 
With a prolonged whistle, a train came out of the wood. 
It was carrying soldiers to the west, into the dim sunset. 

Approaching the house along the edge of the wood, 
Dasha and Nikolai, through the veranda windows, 
could see a table set and a lamp with a dull globe and 
some one’s shadow moving within. The house dog, Sharik, 
ran towards them with an affectionate bark, wagging its 
tail, then it ran away into the wormwood and continued 
to bark there. 

Ekaterina Dmitrievna drummed her fingers on the 
veranda window; she was not yet allowed out of doors 
after sunset. Shutting the gate behind him, Nikolai Ivano- 
vitch said: “I think it’s a pretty house.” They sat down 
to supper. Ekaterina Dmitrievna related the local news 
of the day. A mad dog from Tushin had bitten two 
of the Kishkins’ chickens. The Jilkins, who had taken 
the Simovskys’ house, had had their samovar stolen. 
Matrena, the cook, had again given her boy a hiding. 
The wretch was quite out of hand and went about other 
people’s gardens, tearing their flowers. 

Dasha ate in silence. She was very tired after her da} 7 
in town. Nikolai Ivanovitch took a bundle of newspapers 
out of his case and settled down to read, digging his 
teeth with a toothpick. Every time he came across an 
unpleasant piece of news he clucked his tongue until 

[ 256 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


Katia said: “Nikolai, please don’t do that!” Dasha went 
out on the porch and sat down, her chin resting on her 
hand. She gazed at the darkening plain, at the flames of 
campfires to be seen here and there and at the awaken¬ 
ing bright stars. The garden smelt of newly watered 
flower-beds. 

Nikolai Ivanovitch came out on the veranda, rustling 
his newspaper, and said: 

“The war can’t last much longer, for the simple reason 
that we and the Allies are ruining ourselves.” 

“Would you like some sour milk?” Katia asked. 

“I should like some, if it’s cold. How awful! We 
have lost Lvov and Lublin. The deuce knows what’s the 
matter! How can you fight when traitors plunge a knife 
into your back? It’s incredible!” 

“Nikolai, don’t cluck your tongue.” 

“Do leave me alone! If we lose Warsaw, it will be 
a disgrace. One won’t want to live after that. Really, 
it does seem to me sometimes that it would be best to 
conclude some kind of an armistice and turn the bayonets 
on Petersburg.” 

In the distance the whistle of a train was heard. It 
rattled over the bridge across the stream in which the 
sunset had recently been reflected, carrying wounded, no 
doubt, to Moscow. Nikolai Ivanovitch again rustled his 
paper. 

“Men are sent to the front without rifles. They are 
sitting in the trenches with sticks. There is one rifle to 
every five men.” He stopped, choking. “Men go out to 
attack with their sticks only, hoping when a neighbour 
is killed to get his rifle. Oh, God!” 

Dasha left the porch and leaned on the garden gate. 
The light from the veranda fell on the broken bee- 

[ 257 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


hives by the fence, on the parched grass on the road. 
Walking past with head bent, reluctant and miserable, 
came Petka, Matrena’s son, scraping the dust with bare 
feet. There was nothing for him to do but to return 
to the kitchen, take his punishment, cry for some min¬ 
utes and fall asleep. 

Dasha went out at the gate and walked down to the 
stream. Standing on a cliff in the darkness, she listened. 
From somewhere a pelican murmured, a sound heard 
only at night. Still murmuring, the pelican flew away 
and a clump of dry earth from the cliff splashed into the 
water. On either side were the black outlines of motion¬ 
less trees. Suddenly the leaves began to rustle sleepily 
and again it was still. Dasha compressed her lips and 
turned back. Beneath her feet and catching against her 
skirt on the dry earth was bitter, fragrant wormwood. 


Early in June, on a holiday morning, Dasha rose early 
and to avoid waking Katia she went into the kitchen to 
wash. A pile of vegetables, carrots, tomatoes, cauliflower, 
was lying on the table, and on the top was a green post¬ 
card. The greengrocer had, no doubt, brought it from the 
post office with the newspapers. M ; atrena’s boy, Petka, 
was sitting in the open doorway, panting in his efforts 
to tie a hen’s foot on to a stick. Matrena herself was 
hanging kitchen towels on the acacia trees in the garden. 

Dasha poured some water, which smelt of the river, 
into an earthenware basin and let her chemise fall from 
her shoulder. She looked again at the postcard to see 
what it was and taking it up with the tips of her wet 
fingers, she read: “Dear Dasha, I am anxious because 

[ 258 ] 



THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


I have not received a single reply to any of my letters. 
It can’t be that they are all lost.” .. . 

Dasha sank into a chair. Her eyes grew dim and her 
legs trembled. “My wound has quite healed. I do 
gymnastics every day and try to keep myself generally 
fit. I am also trying to learn English and French. The 
other day they brought a new batch of prisoners here 
and whom do you think I saw ? Akundin. He is an en¬ 
sign. Got taken prisoner and is very cheerful and pleased 
with himself. He was in our camp for a week, but they 
moved him somewhere. It is very strange. I kiss you, 
Dasha, if you still remember me. I. Teliegin.” 

Dasha quickly pulled her chemise on her shoulders 
and bending down read the letter a second time. “If you 
still remember me.” . . . She jumped up and ran into 
Katia’s bedroom and threw back the chintz curtains. 

“Katia, read this aloud.” 

She sat down on Katia’s bed and, without waiting for 
Katia, read the postcard herself and burst into tears, 
bending her head to her knees. She soon jumped up and 
clapped her hands. 

“Oh, Katia, isn’t it awful!” 

“But, thank God, he is alive, Dasha.” 

“I love him. Oh, God, what shall I do? When will 
the war end?” 

Dasha seized the postcard and ran in to Nikolai Ivano- 
vitch. When she had read him the contents, she de¬ 
manded to know on the spot when the war would end. 

“But no one can tell, my dear.” 

“Then what do you do in that stupid Union of Towns? 
You only talk nonsense from morning to night. I shall 
go to Moscow at once to the commander of the troops 
and I’ll ask him. ...” 


[ 259 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 

“What will you ask him? Ah, Dasha, dear, you must 
wait.” 

Nikolai Ivanovitch shrugged his shoulders and made 
some sound with his lips. Dasha went to Moscow, to 
the commander of the troops, but when he was informed 
of her purpose, she was not allowed to see him. She went 
to the office of a big newspaper and demanded to see the 
editor and, gazing with hope at his big, sleepy face and 
bloodshot eye, she asked if there was no way by which 
she could see the man she was engaged to marry. 

The editor spread out his fingers on his chest and 
sighed deeply. 

“And can’t you really tell me when the war is going 
to end ?” Dasha asked. 

The editor shrugged his fat shoulders, distended his 
nose, parted his lips and shook his head. 

“Thank you,” Dasha said. “Good-bye.” 

For several days Dasha went about in the wildest 
mood, then she calmed down. In the evening she would 
retire early to her room, write letters to Ivan Ilyitch and 
pack parcels to send to him. When Ekaterina Dmitrievna 
spoke of Teliegin, Dasha would be silent. She gave up 
her evening walks and stayed at home with Katia, sew¬ 
ing and reading. It was essential to drive all feeling 
deeply inwards and to cover oneself with the invulnerable 
skin of workaday life. 

Ekaterina Dmitrievna, though fully recovered in health 
that summer, was low in spirits, like Dasha. Often the 
sisters would talk of how they and every one just then 
went about with a weight like a millstone round them. 
It was hard to wake, hard to walk, hard to think, hard 
to meet people. You only longed to go to bed and then, 
worn out, your only joy was to fall asleep, to forget. 

[ 260 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


There were the Jilkins, who had asked some friends to 
sample their new jam the other day, and while they were 
at tea some one brought a newspaper and Jilkin’s 
brother’s name was in the list of killed. He had died 
on the field of glory. The hosts had gone into the house, 
leaving the guests on the balcony in the twilight to creep 
away in silence as at a funeral. It was like that every¬ 
where. Living had become dear. The future was dark 
and hopeless. The Russian army was still retreating, 
dissolving like wax. Warsaw had been abandoned. 
Brest-Litovsk had fallen. Spies were caught all over the 
place. On the river Hinka a robber band had settled in 
a ravine and for a week the people had been afraid to 
enter the wood. The keepers had chased them from the 
ravine; two had been captured, and the third, it was 
said, had escaped into the Evenigorsky district to clear 
the houses there. 

One morning, on the square outside the Smokovnikovs’ 
house, an izvozchik drove up, standing upright in his 
droshky. From all over the place peasant women and 
cooks and children came running up. Something had 
evidently happened. From all the houses people rushed 
out at the gates. Matrena came dashing down the gar¬ 
den, wiping her hands as she ran. The izvozchik, a man 
with a stubbly beard, hot and red in the face, was stand¬ 
ing in his droshky, saying: 

“He was dragged out of his office and torn to pieces. 
They pulled him along the bridge and threw him into the 
river. And there are five more Germans hiding in the 
factory. Silk and velvet are flying about the Lubiansky 
Square. There is looting all over the town . . . and 
crowds of people. . 

Ekaterina Dmitrievna was alarmed, for Dasha and 

[261 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


Nikolai Ivanovitch were in Moscow. From that direc¬ 
tion, in the grey, glowing sky, a black column of smoke 
rose and spread into a cloud. The fire could be seen 
from the village square, where groups of peasants stood 
about. When one of the inhabitants of the bigger houses 
approached them, conversation ceased. The gentry were 
looked on either with contempt or with some kind of ex¬ 
pectancy. It was as hot as before a storm. A burly 
peasant without a cap came up to the brick shrine and 
cried: “They are killing Germans in Moscow !” 

At this the women’s voices rose. The pregnant grew 
nervous. The crowd moved towards the shrine. Eka¬ 
terina Dmitrievna ran out. The crowd was talking ex¬ 
citedly. , 

“The Warsaw railway station, they say, has been set 
on fire by the Germans.” 

“They’ve killed about two thousand Germans.” 

“Not two, but six and a half thousand and thrown 
them all in the Yows.” 

“They began with the Germans and then they went on. 
They say they’ve cleared the Kusnetsky Bridge.” 

“It serves them right. They’ve lived on the sweat of 
our brow long enough and fattened their stomachs, the 
swine.” 

“You can’t stop the people.” 

“But I tell you, there are troops on the Negliny. 
They’ve fired on the people three times.” 

“Of course, it’s horrible. You can’t allow looting.” 

“The mayor’s head has been smashed.” 

“What’s that you’re saying?” 

“In the Petersburg Park. By God, it’s true. My sis¬ 
ter has just come from there. In the park, they say, 
they found a wireless machine in a house and two spies 

[ 262 ] 


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with false beards. They killed the five fellows of course.” 

“They ought to go through all the big houses, that’s 
what they ought to do.” 

Some village girls came running down the hill on to 
the Moscow road, carrying empty sacks. The people 
shouted after them. Ekaterina Dmitrievna asked a hand¬ 
some old peasant, who was leaning on a staff near by: 
“Where are the girls going?” 

“To loot, dear lady.” 

Dasha and Nikolai Ivanovitch at last returned about 
six o’clock. Both were excited and kept interrupting 
one another as they related what had happened in Mos¬ 
cow. The people had gathered in crowds and broken 
up German houses and shops. Several houses had been 
burned to the ground. Mandel’s ready-made clothing es¬ 
tablishment had been looted. Peasants and women had 
dressed up in the clothes and sung “God Save the Tsar.” 
The Bekkerovsky piano store on the Kusnetsky had been 
destroyed. The pianos were chucked out of the second 
floor window and made into a bonfire. The Lubiansky 
Square was strewn with medicines and broken glass. It 
was said there had been cases of murder. The patrols 
had come out in the afternoon and dispersed the crowds. 
Just now everything was quiet. 

“It is sheer barbarism, of course,” said Nikolai Ivano¬ 
vitch, his eyes blinking with excitement, “but I like the 
spirit; it shows the power of the people. Today they 
destroy German shops, and tomorrow they will put up 
barricades, devil take it. The government purposely per¬ 
mitted this pogrom. It’s a fact, I assure you. They 
wanted the people to let off some of their accumulated 
wrath. But this kind of business will give them a taste 
for things more serious, ha, ha!” . . . 


[ 263 ] 


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That night the Jilkins had their cellar cleared and the 
Svetchnikovs had all their linen stolen from the attic. 
Some of the inhabitants had, with their own eyes, seen 
peasant women with bundles slinking away in the dark¬ 
ness among the trees. The public-house was lighted up 
until the morning. After a few more weeks had passed 
the villagers began to whisper among themselves and to 
stare at the villa people in an incomprehensible way. 

Early in August the Smokovnikovs removed to town 
and Ekaterina Dmitrievna commenced work again at the 
hospital. Moscow, that autumn, was filled with refugees 
from Poland. It was impossible to move on the Kusnet- 
sky, Petrovka and Tverskaya. The shops, cafes and 
theatres were packed and the new phrase “I beg your 
pardon” was heard everywhere. 

The excitement and the luxury, the packed theatres, 
hotels and brilliantly lighted streets were all a screen to 
hide the living wall of fourteen million troops, who were 
shedding their blood. 

The military situation was not consoling. At the front 
and at home they talked of Rasputin’s evil influence, of 
treachery, about the impossibility of carrying on the war 
unless St. Nicholas worked a miracle. 

And then, at a time of depression and corruption, Gen¬ 
eral Russky stopped the advancing German army. On 
this occasion, Russia was saved. 


[ 264 ] 


XXIII 


On the slope of a hill beyond the town, in the middle 
of a neglected vineyard stood a yellow stone house with 
an ugly square tower. The place was called “Chateau 
Caberne.” The house was built some thirty years back 
by Jadov’s father, a ruined Orlov landowner. Gathering 
together the remnants of what had once been a big for¬ 
tune, he moved to Anap, where he bought a vineyard and 
built himself a house. A pretty Cossack servant girl bore 
him a son, whom he named Arkadi. Some eighteen 
months after his birth, the mother ran away with some 
Turks on a felucca, to Trebizond, it was said. The boy 
grew up in the yard, but when his father noticed in him 
a strong resemblance to himself he took him into the 
house. 

Arkadi was at first afraid of his father and after¬ 
wards despised him. He was fond of keeping company 
with fishermen, hunters, tramps; he fought with daring, 
could shoot well, swim and sail a boat. After his school 
examinations, one summer, when he was fifteen, he no¬ 
ticed a girl bathing. She kept diving into the water, 
turning over and exposing her strong, bare back. She 
came out of the sea, red-cheeked and plump, sat down on 
the sand and wrung out her dark hair. Arkadi felt a 
horrible pain in his heart as he looked at her. He 
crawled away from the bush behind which he had been 
hiding and flinging himself on a hot sand dune, he wept 
with despair, as though his heart would break. He found 
out where the girl lived. Her name was Alena. He stole 

[265 ] 


9 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


a Caucasian silver belt from his father and made her a 
present of it. Alena gave herself cheerfully to Arkadi. 
A miserable period ensued for him, a period of continu¬ 
ous thoughts of the girl he had possessed, of her feminine 
charms. She assumed monstrous proportions in his im¬ 
agination. Sometimes he had a desire to beat her out of 
consciousness, then to go away proud and free. But he 
met her every evening in a hollow among the dunes and 
tormented her with his jealousy and greed. Just as 
Arkadi’s mother had done. Alena ran away in the au¬ 
tumn on a felucca. He felt relieved. A clinging weight 
seemed to have been taken from him but in sleep he wept 
in his despair, hating himself and resolving to suppress 
any spark of tenderness he might feel. 

The following spring Arkadi gave up school and, with 
two friends of his, Abhasians, he tramped about the 
mountains for a year. When he returned home his father 
was pleased. He did not upbraid him, only remarking: 
“Aye, my son, a nettle seed will always show itself.” 

His father’s affairs were in a bad way. He had run 
through his capital and a large portion of the vineyard 
was sold. Arkadi returned to school and soon after leav¬ 
ing his father died in a fit of delirium tremens. The 
Japanese war broke out at that time. Arkadi enlisted 
as a volunteer. He was wounded, promoted to the 
rank of ensign, and after the war, for three years, he 
dragged himself about Siberia and China. In business, 
he was not successful. He had been a commission agent, 
working for tea and fur merchants. He tried being an 
insurance agent, a gold digger, a clerk, a smuggler, but 
his clever schemes, which were always so enthusiastically 
begun, came to nought, chiefly because those who had 
anything to do with him mistrusted and feared him. For 
women he had a great attraction, easily capturing their 

[ 266 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


imaginations. He was always trying to invent some 
mystery in life that would be known only to himself. 
It was this that gave him the idea of tattooing himself. 
A Japanese in Macedonia was engaged on his skin for a 
fortnight, and with great skill tattooed in black and red 
Indian ink seven monkeys in the form of a necklace. 

Jadov considered himself a remarkable person. Women 
who gave themselves to him held him to be a criminal, 
but could never discover in what his crime consisted. He 
did not rob or kill, though there would have been noth¬ 
ing easier than to strangle some love-sick merchant’s wife 
bedecked with pearls and diamonds in some hotel beyond 
the town. 

He always went about in a state of restlessness, per¬ 
petually wanting to do something, without knowing 
what. It was only in his cups that he dreamed of some 
wild debauchery when the reason of his restlessness 
would be revealed to him, while his head was splitting 
from the strong drink. He liked to drink when alone 
behind a locked door. He would pace up and down the 
room, talking to himself, or throw himself on a couch 
and dream. A favourite day-dream consisted of a picture 
of peasants dashing in their carts over stormy autumn 
trackless fields. They would lash at their horses. Ahead 
was the outline of a town and hanging over it, clouds of 
smoke from burning houses. The wind that sweeps over 
the grass carries the sound of a tocsin bell. There is an 
insurrection. 

But this was mere dreaming, nonsense, the working of 
his youthful blood. Jadov managed somehow to scrape 
together some money and two years before the European 
war he returned to Anap and lived for the time being 
without any definite occupation. 


[2671 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


He made some friends. One was an educated work¬ 
man named Filka, who worked at a repairing shop and 
another was a Moscow student named Gvosdik, who 
earned his living by giving private lessons. It used to be 
said in the town that they belonged to some secret or¬ 
ganization. The friends would meet at the “Chateau 
Caberne,” in the cellar of which there still remained sev¬ 
eral barrels of the paternal wine. On autumn nights 
sometimes they would light a campfire on the top of the 
tower. At daybreak they used to go bathing, even in 
winter. 

The police grew interested in the doings of the 
“Chateau Caberne/’ and Jadov was summoned to the dis¬ 
trict head. But just about that time the war began. 

Early in the spring of 1916 the inhabitants of Anap 
once more saw lights in the windows of Jadov’s de¬ 
serted house. It was said that Arkadi Jadov had lost 
both arms at the war, that he did not go anywhere ex¬ 
cept on to the shore, and that some remarkable beauty 
was living with him. In the evenings, Jadov’s old 
friends could be seen coming over the hills to the 
“Chateau Caberne.” Gvosdik had also just returned a 
cripple from the war. Then there was Filka and a third 
man, a newcomer from Petersburg, a futurist poet, Alex¬ 
ander Jirov, who had been exempted from military ser¬ 
vice. The Anap inhabitants were sure that orgies went 
on at the “Chateau Caberne.” 

One day at dusk a northeast wind bent the bare pop¬ 
lars into bows, shook the frames of Jadov’s house and 
rattled the roof until it seemed that some one must be 
tramping over the iron. The wind blew in at every 
crevice, under the doors and down the chimneys. 
Through the dirty windows the stormy fields could be 
seen and the bare branches swept above them. Over the 

[268 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


rough sea broken clouds flew swiftly in the distance. It 
was dull and cold. 

Arkadi Jadov was sitting on a small, dirty couch by 
the wall, drinking red wine. His empty sleeve, once so 
smart, but now crushed with being lain on, was stuck 
into the belt of his leather coat. His face was a little 
puffed, but fresh-coloured and clean-shaven. His hair 
was smoothed down on either side, but ruffled somewhat 
at the top. 

He was lounging against the back of the couch, his 
eyes half shut to keep out the smoke of his cigarette, 
staring at Elisaveta Kievna. He had been silent for a 
whole hour. He had accustomed her never to begin a 
conversation on her own account, while he himself could 
be silent for days. Elisaveta Kievna was attired in a 
brown woollen dressing-gown, open low at the neck, torn 
stockings and warm slippers. Her massive hair, twisted 
round the head, was untidy at the temples. 

“What a scarecrow you look, you slut,” Jadov said 
at last, chewing his cigarette. “I hate you.” 

Elisaveta Kievna turned her head towards him and 
smiled. She took another cigarette and struck a match 
to light it. The light shone on her face and Jadov could 
see the tears rolling down her cheeks. He spat out the 
end of his cigarette. 

“Bring me some more Caberne.” 

Elisaveta Kievna rose slowly and walked through the 
cold bare rooms to the spiral staircase. As she walked 
down the rickety steps she lighted a candle. She went 
into the cellar, which smelt strongly of mildew and wine. 
Huge spiders ran over the brick arches; Elisaveta Kievna 
was mortally afraid of them. She sat down by a barrel 
and watched the blood-red wine as it poured into the 
jug. Arkadi would kill her one day, she thought, and 

[ 269 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


bury her in the cellar beneath the barrels. When in 
Jadov’s presence she dared not indulge in such thoughts, 
but when alone she took a morbid pleasure in imagining 
how he would fire, how she would fall and die silently, 
with a smile on her lips. He would bury her body and 
sit down by a barrel just as she was doing and watch 
the thick wine pouring, then, for the first time in his life 
he would suddenly burst into tears with the agony of 
it all. These thoughts compensated her for the suffer¬ 
ings she had to endure. She would triumph in the end, 
not he. 

Six months ago, in a hospital in a town behind the 
firing lines, on a rainy night, when Jadov’s amputated 
arm ached and gnawed, he spoke to Elisaveta Kievna 
about a wonderful revelation that had come to him dur¬ 
ing the war. He had realized that just as it was not 
wrong to take a stick and turn over an ant heap, so with 
an equal clearness of spirit could one destroy the state, 
law and religion. A man is born for a short span of 
life in order freely to develop his genius and his pas¬ 
sions. The instinct of the mass is to guard against in¬ 
dividuality, to chain its purpose by duties, to make life 
as flat as a bog, in which all the frogs are equal. There 
are two laws in life, the law of individual man and the 
law of mankind, i.e., the law of freedom and the law 
of equality. To unite the two conceptions was ridiculous, 
for they were opposite. In the present war humanity 
was destroying itself for the sake of the state, law and 
religion. People were easily reverting to the herd, made 
into regiments, divisions and corps. All were animated 
by a blind unreasoning hatred and were destroying the 
enemy because he was different from themselves. In this 
bloody war men hated every inequality, the very idea of 
freedom. 

[ 270 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


Modern civilization had come to this monstrous pass. 
The state consumed itself for the sake of equality, which 
was universal slavery. There was only one issue: to 
destroy to the roots our present world civilization and 
on the liberated and desolate earth, to begin to live for 
the sake of oneself. 

These ideas seemed miraculous to Elisaveta Kievna. 
She had at last met a man who had fired her imagination. 
For hours on end, with burning cheeks, she stared at 
Jadov’s lean and cynical face and listened to his ravings. 

When her leave was over and she was compelled to 
return to the “flying” hospital, Jadov said, “It would be 
absurd of you to leave me.” 

“But they won’t extend my leave.” 

“We must be married.” 

Elisaveta Kievna nodded her consent. They were mar¬ 
ried in the hospital. In December Jadov was moved to 
Moscow, where he had another operation performed and 
early in the spring he came with Elisaveta Kievna to Anap 
and settled in the “Chateau Caberne.” They had very little 
money and kept no servants, except an old porter, who 
used to do their shopping in the town. A long period of 
hopeless idleness began in that cold, bare, half-ruined 
house. There was nothing left to talk about and in front 
of them lay boredom and poverty. A dark door seemed 
to have slammed behind them. 

Elisaveta Kievna tried to fill the emptiness of those 
terribly long days with her own personality, but in this 
she succeeded badly. She was ridiculous when she tried 
to charm, with her untidiness and incapacity. Jadov 
would taunt her with it and she would think in despair 
that, notwithstanding her broadness of view, she was 
very sensitive as a woman. 


[271 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


Lately he had become cruel and would be silent for 
days, while she found consolation in imagining how he 
would kill and then, in his hopeless loneliness, would 
come to love her at last. And yet, she knew that she 
would not have exchanged for any other life, this life of 
torment, anxiety and pain, of submission to her husband 
and rare moments of joy. 

Elisaveta Kievna took up the heavy jug when she had 
filled it and went upstairs. The lamp had not yet been 
lighted in the room, but visitors were there. Alexander 
Ivanovitch Jirov and Filka were sitting on the window¬ 
sill and Gvosdik, a tall man with a weak back, was pacing 
from door to window, angrily talking to Jadov. 

“The French Revolution let loose individuality and in 
the fever of romanticism, bourgeois civilization was born. 
At the end of the century a few individualities, some 
score of millionaires, attained perfect freedom, but at 
the price of enslaving the whole world. Your idea of in¬ 
dividuality, your king of kings, has been exploded like a 
soap-bubble. It led nowhere, merely lighting up the 
dungeons of the penal prisons where we forged our 
chains. The light of that pernicious torch has been 
broken. . . . We must uproot the very instinct of separate 
individuality, the I as I. . . . We must let mankind go back 
to the herd and we will become its leaders. We must 
destroy any one who is an inch above the herd.” He 
pointed a bony hand at Jadov: “The whole idea is in that 
inch and we must lop it off. In the terrible sunset of the 
age in which we have started on our way, we are envel¬ 
oped in night. A war was arranged for us. We have 
been set against each other once more. For the last time 
they have tried to deceive us damnably. But there are 
many millions of us and we will survive this war.” 

[ 272 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


He doubled up suddenly and began to cough, a dry, in¬ 
ternal cough, which sounded like a bark. He dropped 
into a chair and shook his hairy head. Filka, who was 
sitting on the window-sill, began to speak in a thin, soft 
voice. 

“At our works it is only the fools who do not see why 
the people are shedding their blood and why we are 
straining our stomachs with overtime. It is an adventure 
of world capitalism. The people were driven into the 
war; the chief ring-leaders, the German Emperor, the 
King of England, the French President, the Austrian 
Francis Joseph, and our own fool have long settled it 
among themselves.” 

“Nonsense,” said Gvosdik, breathing hard. “Don't 
talk such nonsense! But if you mean that their aim is 
the same, there I agree with you.” 

“I have every reason for what I say.” 

Gvosdik rose and poured himself out a glass of wine. 
His Adam’s apple moved up and down as he drank it. 
Once more he began to pace the room with his flat feet. 

“You have come back a stranger, Jadov,” he said. 
“We no longer understand one another. Hear me out. 
Your analysis is a correct one. In the first place, capi¬ 
talism had to make a clearance of its accumulated goods; 
in the second place, capitalism had to crush with a 
single blow proletarian democracy, which was becoming 
too dangerous. They have attained their first object with 
even more success than anticipated. The demands of the 
war were a hundredfold more than the peace demands. 
Wagon-loads of goods can be cast into that furnace. As 
for their second object, they will be broken on that. The 
ace of hearts will be beaten. It won’t be capital that will 
triumph, but the masses of the people, the ants, social- 

[ 273 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


ism. A milliard people are living under conditions of 
military operations and the military socialization of in¬ 
dustry. Fifty million men, from the ages of seventeen to 
forty-five, are in possession of arms. The separation of 
the working masses of Europe is an artificial one. The 
workers have learnt to make arms and at a given sign 
they will stretch out their hands to each other across the 
trenches. The war will end in revolution, in a world 
conflagration; the bayonets will be turned on the coun¬ 
tries’ interiors. And now you come out with your retro¬ 
grade deduction which is both false and foolish. What 
is the use of your individual freedom? It is anarchism, 
madness. The pathos of equality is the issue of the war. 
You understand what that means. It means a reconstruc¬ 
tion of the whole world, of the state and morality. The 
globe must be turned inside out in order to come but a 
little nearer to the truth, which is burning in a bloody 
flame among the masses of the people. Justice! A scabby 
beggar will rise up on an emperor’s throne and cry, ‘The 
world for all!’ and the people will bow down before him 
and kiss his scabs. From cellar and sewer they will drag 
out a creature, in the last stages of degradation, a creature 
barely resembling a human being, and according to his 
pattern they will cut the general level. Where do you 
come in with your individuality, with your king of kings? 
They will cut off your head if it sticks up above the 
others.” 

Jadov was sprawling on the couch, shifting his ciga¬ 
rette from one side of his mouth to the other. The glow it 
cast lighted up his sneering lips and his cold nose. Elisa- 
veta Kievna gazed at him from the dark corner in which 
she sat. 

“Drunk and tired as you are,” she thought. “I will 

[274 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


undress you and put you to bed. Nobody but I under¬ 
stands your soul. Even though you hate, I shall be true 
to you till death.” Her heart beat fast. 

“Supposing,” Jadov began, in a low, icy voice, “suppos¬ 
ing that your rickety Mitruka, with his jaw smashed at 
the war, does get up at last and bawl about equality; 
supposing that he kills his officers, abolishes parliaments 
and councils of ministers and chops off the head of any 
one who uses a handkerchief and so on, and that every¬ 
thing in the world is made equal. Supposing it is as you 
say. But what will you leaders be doing all the time? 
Will you be brought down to the level of Mitruka, the 
syphilitic from the sewer, eh?” 

Gvosdik replied quickly. 

“To pass from war to mutiny, from mutiny to political 
revolution and further on to social revolution, we must 
bring out a fourth class, the armed proletariat, which must 
bear the responsibility for the revolution, assume the 
dictatorship.” 

“Then you abandon your idea of levelling down to 
Mitruka?” 

“During the revolution there will not be equality; there 
will be dictatorship. Revolutionary ideas are implanted 
in fire and blood, as you ought to know.” 

“And what will you do with your revolutionary prole¬ 
tariat when the revolution is over? Will you level the 
whole class to Mitruka, or will you allow your worthy 
revolutionary aristocracy to remain somehow or other?” 

Gvosdik stopped and scratched his beard. 

“The proletariat will return to its lathes. . . . Of 
course you are bound to come in conflict here with hu¬ 
man nature, but what are you to do? The tops must 
be lopped off.” 


[275 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 

“On one fine day, then, realizing that the revolution 
is finished, your revolutionary proletariat with the com¬ 
rade dictators at the head will decree to have itself 
abolished,” Jadov said, “so you would have us believe. 
But that is not my idea. There is a curious law of na¬ 
ture according to which, the more abstract an idea, the 
bloodier is its incarnation to life, and it incarnates math¬ 
ematically, feet upwards. In Jewish cabalistics our 
world is supposed to be an overturned shadow of God. 
It is a very old law. When you come to the idea of 
love and freedom, it is quite clear to what they will- 
lead. You have only to apply such an idea to man¬ 
kind and fountains of blood will rush to meet you. The 
time has gone by for your idea of equality. You ad¬ 
mit that it must bring bloodshed, and in that, I am at 
one with you; I give you my hand on it, comrades; I 
believe in your dictatorship, too, but as to how it will 
end, about that we had better keep silent. Your son 
of a dog, your rickety Mitruka, the syphilitic, I loathe 
and despise from the bottom of my heart. I agree to 
level him under the rake and to knock him on the head 
when he cries out. I am ready to make revolution to¬ 
morrow morning, if you like, but not for the sake of 
levelling myself to Mitruka, but for the levelling of 
Mitruka. ... I shall be a good master, I promise you.” 

Jadov lifted his legs and got up. He finished his 
glass of wine at a gulp and began to pace the room with 
a light, jerky tread. Elisaveta Kievna watched him 
from her corner with a beating heart. 

“Look at him, the king of kings, the great man, my 
husband!” 

The wind, which had risen with the night, shook the 
shutters, blew in at every crevice, and howled wildly 
in the attic. 

[276 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


The friends were silent. Filka got off the window-sill, 
poured himself out some wine, and turning with the glass 
in his hand, said to Jadov, in a wheedling tone: 

“We want more men like you, Comrade Jadov. God 
only knows when the revolution will begin or when it 
will end, and we have no fighters. The people are very 
ignorant. They only know how to hate, but when it 
comes to business, they are ready to stab each other in 
the back. It is a risky business to begin, of course, and 
there is no one to begin it.” 

“To begin it, the devil! To begin with three ko¬ 
pecks!” Jadov said, throwing himself down on the couch 
again. Suddenly he asked in a different tone: 

“Alexander Ivanovitch, well now? . . .” 

All heads turned to the dark, narrow-shouldered form 
of Jirov, sitting on the window-sill. He began to fidg¬ 
et. Gvosdik spoke excitedly. 

“Comrades, I haven’t the party’s permission; I can’t 
take part in this business.” 

“I take the responsibility of it myself,” said Jadov; 
“that’s settled and has nothing to do with the party. 

“Are you satisfied?” 

Gvosdik was silent. Filka spoke in a still more 
wheedling voice. 

“It is a public affair. We agree absolutely, but as 
for the party, it is doubtful.” 

Gvosdik drummed his fingers on the table. 

“I shall take part in the deliberations as a private 
person only. I must warn you again that I can’t take 
the responsibility. You must act without me. Filka 
can do as he likes.” 

“But will you take the money?” Jadov cried. 

“Yes.” 


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“That’s all right, then; it’s settled, Lisa, bring some 
more wine.” 

Elisaveta Kievna took up the jug and walked out. 
She knew that something important was going on just 
now, a thing they had been deliberating for five nights. 

It began soon after Alexander Jirov had told them 
about a new acquaintance he had made, Colonel Bris- 
sov, the commandant of the Anap garrison, a Vladi¬ 
vostok man, whom he discovered to be an unexpected 
admirer of the new poetry. A few days later, in a room 
at the Anap Greek hotel there had been a meeting with 
the colonel. Jadov, Jirov and Elisaveta Kievna were 
there. Brissov gave them some genuine crown vodka, 
read them futurist poems and laughed loudly, stroking 
his half grey beard on each cheek. There was no end 
to his good-nature and muddle-headedness. 

“I am the last of the Lantsepoups,” Brissov had 
cried, unfastening his sweating khaki coat. “I’ve got 
the will in my possession. After the Japanese war, the 
modern style came into vogue and the Lantsepoups grew 
degenerate. There used to be a club at Vladivostok 
at one time. They’d have a glass of vodka for you at 
every step on the staircase. You ought to have tried 
the walking up; ha, ha; with thirty-seven steps to get 
up!” 

The colonel, evidently, had no secrets whatever. He 
told them about “the phenomenal looting that was go¬ 
ing on in the newly occupied Turkish regions,” and that 
“a felucca with stolen gold would be coming there in a 
day or two from Trebizond. I am told they are carry¬ 
ing rice; ha, ha! Rice! And why, may I ask, should 
they order me to place a military guard for the ar¬ 
rival of a private vessel carrying rice?” 

Elisaveta Kievna had guessed that the nocturnal gath- 

[ 278 ] 


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erings related to the felucca. When she returned with 
the wine, the visitors had already gone. Jadov was 
standing by the window. 

“They can all talk,” he said in a low voice, without 
turning, “but when it comes to jumping from the word 
to the deed. . . .You try it. ...” He turned to 
his wife. His face was distorted. “The essence is in 
the jump, not the idea of it. I may break my neck, but 
I shall jump. The jump is the brave thing. . . . Ideas 
are ideas. Gvosdik says I am an anarchist. He talks 
nonsense, like a fool. ... I want to live. That is the 
sum total of my philosophy. Quite enough reason to spit 
on all your laws, God-made and man-made. . . . Why do 
you stare at me? Yes, I am brave because ...” 

He put out his hand to push Elisaveta Kievna aside, 
for she had come quite close to him, but she caught 
at his cold fingers. He suddenly drooped his head. 

“What have you decided to do?” 

“To rob the felucca with rice tomorrow night.” 

He repeated the sentence more calmly and with a 
sneer, then he began to stare at the dark window. Elis¬ 
aveta Kievna put her arms round his shoulders and 
pressed her cheek against him. He spoke more quietly. 

“There is no justification for the robbery, that is the 
whole force of it. Had there been I would have re¬ 
fused to have anything to do with it. It is unjustifi¬ 
able, that’s the whole essence, don’t you see?” 

“Can I come with you tomorrow?” 

“Yes. The business is only a beginning, Lisa. It 
will help me to turn around. I will raise a cry. We shall 
find friends. We will open the cellars and let man’s hatred 
loose. That will do for the present. Let us go to bed.” 

The whole of the day a strong, cold wind blew. 
Jadov went into the town and returned in the evening, 

[ 279 ] 


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excited and cheerful. At dusk, he walked with Elisa- 
veta Kievna down the hills to the rough, noisy sea. 
Elisaveta Kievna’s teeth chattered. The shore was de¬ 
serted. The twilight grew thicker. At the place where 
the dunes came right up to the water, two figures rose 
from a bush. They were Filka and Alexander Jirov. 

“We have left the sloop by the bathing place; it was 
too shallow to bring it here,” Filka said in a whisper. 

Jadov did not reply. He walked over the sticky 
sand, against which the waves were lapping. Walking 
was difficult, the water coming up higher than the knees. 
Elisaveta Kievna stumbled against a stump and caught 
hold of Jirov, who staggered, terrified. His face and thick 
lips were as white as chalk. 

“It’s a mad, astounding night,” she said. 

“Aren’t you afraid ?” he asked in a whisper. 

“What nonsense! On the contrary.” 

“Do you know that Filka threatened to kill me?” 

“Why ?” 

“If I refused to come with you.” 

“He was right.” 

“But, you know. ...” 

By a crooked, creaking bathing-hut, which smelt of 
sea-weed and decay, a steep-sided sloop rocked to and 
fro. Jadov was the first to jump into it. He sat down 
by the rudder. 

“Jirov to the prow; Lisa and Filka take the oars!” 

It was difficult to get away from the bank; huge 
breakers kept dashing the sloop on the sands. They 
were all soaked through. Jirov gave a low cry, hold¬ 
ing on to his hat and made a sudden attempt to leave 
the boat. Jadov stood up and said, “Filka, knock him 
down with the oar!” and Jirov again huddled up, trem¬ 
bling at the boat’s prow. 

[280 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


Elisaveta Kievna pulled strongly at the oars, lean¬ 
ing back with every stroke. Had it not been for her 
husband she would have cried aloud with joy. The 
boat now rose at the crest of the noisy waves, now fell 
between the walls of black water. 

Jadov again rose in the stern and looked about him. 
Some twenty sagenes ahead there rocked the black form 
of a two-masted felucca. Jadov turned leeward and 
called to Jirov, “Catch hold of the rope!” 

The sloop came close to the body of the felucca, 
which smelt strongly of hot tar and creaked as it rose 
and fell with the waves. The wind whistled through 
the rigging. Alexander Jirov caught hold of the rope 
with both hands. Filka caught at the rope ladder with 
the boat-hook. Light as a cat Jadov ran up the ladder 
and sprang on deck. Filka sprang after him. Elisa¬ 
veta Kievna put down the oars and looked up. A min¬ 
ute passed, not more, and three sharp reports were 
heard. Alexander Jirov pressed against the rope and 
dropped his head. Above, a strange voice cried slowly, 
“Oh, they’ve killed me. ...” 

Instantly a bustling began. Three locked figures ap¬ 
peared at the ship’s side. One of them hung over. An 
arm was raised and came down with a heavy blow and 
a body fell with a heavy thud into the water by the 
sloop. Elisaveta Kievna, dazed, looked and listened. 
Jadov came to the ship’s side and called: 

“Alexander Jirov, come up!” 

Jirov hung limp on the rope-ladder. Jadov stretched 
out a hand and pulled him on deck. 

“Lisa, you look after the boat,” he said. “We shall 
soon be through.” 

In an hour, the sloop pushed away from the felucca, 
Filka being the only one to row. A small trunk stood 

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at Elisaveta Kievna’s feet. They had found it in a 
sack of rice. At the bottom of the boat, too, sat Jirov, 
his face huddled between his raised knees. 

They left the sloop by the bathing place and the four 
of them set out to the “Chateau Caberne” along the edge 
of the water, which covered their traces. About half 
way, red shadows were cast on the sand by their mov¬ 
ing figures and the foam of the breakers grew blood- 
red. Elisaveta Kievna turned. In the distance, among 
rolling clouds of smoke, the felucca was burning, cast¬ 
ing a round glow. Jadov bent forward and shouted, 
“Run, run! ...” 


[282 ] 


XXIV 


At the beginning of the winter of 1916, at a time 
of deep depression and disappointed hopes, the Russian 
troops unexpectedly attacked and captured the fort of 
Erzerum. It was a time when the English had under¬ 
gone military reverses in Mesopotamia and Constan¬ 
tinople and on the western front desperate fighting was 
going on for the possession of the ferryman’s little 
house of the Yser, when a few metres of blood-stained 
land captured was held to be a victory, about which 
the electric currents from the Eiffel Tower were busy 
sending messages throughout the world. 

Under most cruel conditions, the Russian army, in 
mountain snowstorms and frost, scrambling up frozen 
rocks, attacked Erzerum and spread throughout the big 
district of ancient towns abandoned by the Turks. 

There was international consternation. A book was 
hastily published in England about the mysteries of the 
Russian soul. And in fact, contrary to all logical rea¬ 
soning, after eighteen months of war, defeat and the 
loss of seventeen governments, the low morale, eco¬ 
nomic collapse and political chaos, Russia once more 
began an advance on the whole of her three thousand 
versts of front. There was a reaction of new and 
seemingly inexhaustible strength. Hundreds of thou¬ 
sands of prisoners were moved to the interior of Rus¬ 
sia. Austria had received a death-blow, after which 
she easily fell to pieces. Germany made a secret offer 
of peace. The value of the; ruble rose. Again hopes 

[283 ] 


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were revived that the war would be ended by military 
force. The “Russian soul” grew popular. Ships were 
filled with Russian divisions. Peasants from Orlov, 
Tula and Riasan sang “Nightingale, little bird” in the 
streets of Salonica, Marseilles and Paris and went into 
the fight with coarse oaths to save European civiliza¬ 
tion. 

It entered many of their heads at the time that lackeys 
and dogs and superior officers might knock them about, 
but that they could not be dispensed with. 

Throughout the summer there was an advance in 
the south to Mesopotamia, Armenia and Asiatic Tur¬ 
key and in the west to the interior of Galicia. All re¬ 
serves were called up. Men of forty were taken from 
field and workshop. In every town supplementary for¬ 
mations were going on. The number of men mobilized 
approached twenty-four millions. There hung over 
Germany and the whole of Europe the time-old terror 
of multitudes of Asiatic hordes. 


Moscow was deserted that summer. Like a pump, 
the war had sucked up all the masculine population. 
Nikolai Ivanovitch had gone to the front, to Minsk, in 
the spring and Dasha and Katia lived in the town in 
a quiet, retired way. There was a great deal of work 
to do. Sometimes short, sad letters would come from 
Teliegin. He had made an attempt to escape from 
captivity, but was caught and removed to a fortress. 

At one time a pleasant young man used to call on 
the sisters. His name was Roshchin; he had only just 
been made an ensign. He came of a good professorial 

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THE ROAD TO CALVARY 

family and had known the Smiokovnikovs in Peters¬ 
burg. 

Every evening at dusk, a ring would be heard at 
the front door. Ekaterina Dmitrievna would sigh 
guardedly and go over to the sideboard to put jam in 
the dishes and to cut up the lemon for tea. Dasha 
noticed that when Roshchin came in after the ring, 
Katia would not immediately turn her head toward him, 
but would wait a moment and smile in her usual sad 
and gentle way. Roshchin would bow silently. He was 
a tall man, with large hands and slow movements. He 
would sit down slowly by the table and in a calm, low 
voice, would relate the war news. Katia would sit quietly 
by the samovar, gazing at his face, and from the solem¬ 
nity of her eyes and her large pupils, it was clear 
that she was not listening to his words. When his gaze 
met hers, Roshchin would immediately bury his clean¬ 
shaven face in his large glass and a bead of perspira¬ 
tion would begin to roll down his cheek. Sometimes 
there would be a long silence at table and Katia would 
sigh, “Oh, heavens!” and she would colour and smile 
apologetically. At seven o’clock Roshchin would rise, 
kiss Katia’s hand carefully and Dasha’s absently and 
depart, hitting his shoulder against the doorpost as he 
went out. His footsteps would long be echoed down 
the deserted street. Katia would wash the cups, lock 
the sideboard, and without a word, would go into her 
own room and turn the key in the lock. 

Once, at sunset, Dasha was sitting by the open win¬ 
dow. Martins were flying high above the street. Dasha 
listened to their shrill, crystal-clear voices, thinking that 
tomorrow would be a hot, fine day, since the martins 
flew so high. The martins knew nothing about the war, 
happy birds! 


[285 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 

The sun sank. The whole town was bathed in a 
golden dust, through which the narrow crescent of the 
moon grew clearer and clearer. People were sitting 
at gateway and porch. Dasha felt sad and apprehen¬ 
sive. Near by a street-organ struck up in the eternal 
evening dullness of the lower orders. Dasha leant her 
elbow on the window-sill. A woman’s high voice, which 
seemed to reach to the very garrets, began to sing “I 
lived on dry crusts and drank cold water.” 

Katia approached the back of Dasha’s chair and 
seemed also to be listening, motionless. 

“How well she sings that, Katia.” 

“Why ?” Katia burst out in a low, agitated voice; 
“why have we been afflicted like this? Is it my fault? 
When will it all end? I shall be an old woman soon. 
I can’t bear it any longer! I can’t! . . . ” She choked. 
She was standing by the wall near the curtains, pale, 
with wrinkles round her mouth, staring at Dasha with 
dry, clear eyes. 

“I can’t bear it any morel I can’t!” she repeated in 
a quiet, hoarse voice. “It is never going to end! We 
shall all be dead! We shall never be happy again. Do 
you hear her singing? She is burying me alive!” 

Dasha put her arms about her sister. She caressed 
and wanted to soothe her, but Katia stuck out her el¬ 
bows and repulsed her. She was like stone. 

“What is the matter, Katia? My dear, do calm your¬ 
self !” But Dasha heard Katia clench her teeth; her 
hands were like ice. “What has happened? Why are 
you like this?” 

Just then a bell rang in the hall. Katia put her sister 
aside and stared at the door. Roshchin entered with 
shaven head. He greeted Dasha with a crooked smile, 
gave his hand to Katia and frowned when he looked 

[ 286 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


at her face. Dasha immediately went into the dining¬ 
room. As she put the tea things on the table, she heard 
Katia ask in a restrained, hoarse voice: 

“Are you going away?” 

“Yes.” 

“Tomorrow ?” 

“Yes. Tomorrow morning.” 

“Where to?” 

“To the third army.” After a pause, he said: 

“The fact is, Ekaterina Dmitrievna, that as we are 
meeting for the last time I have decided to tell you-” 

“No, don’t. I know everything. . . . And you know 
about me. ...” 

“Ekaterina Dmitrievna, you?” 

Katia cried desperately. 

“You can see for yourself! Do go, I implore you!” 

The jam jar in Dasha’s hand trembled. There was 
silence in the drawing-room. At last Katia said quietly: 

“God will guard you. . . . Go, Vadim Petrovitch.” 

“Good-bye.” 

He sighed gently, then his footsteps were heard and 
the door banged. Katia came into the dining-room and 
sat down by the table. She covered her face with her 
hands and the tear-drops fell between her fingers. 

From that day she never spoke a word about the man 
who had gone. And there was nothing to talk about. 
Had she the strength she would have wrenched from her 
heart and forgotten the needless pain, which at twilight 
had entered her foolish, lovesick heart at such an incon¬ 
venient time. 

Katia bore her pain bravely, though she would rise in 
the morning with red eyes and swollen mouth. Roshchin 
sent a postcard on his journey, giving the sisters his kind 

[ 287 ] 



THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


regards. The postcard was put on the mantel-piece, 
where it became covered with fly marks. 

Every evening the sisters would go for a walk in the 
Tverskaya Boulevard to listen to the music. They would 
sit down on a bench and watch the boys and the girls 
in pink dresses and the women and children all strolling 
beneath the trees. A man in uniform with a bandaged 
arm would be seen here and there or an invalid on 
crutches. The Dukhov band would play the waltz “On 
the Hills of Manchuria.” “Tu, tu, tu,” a cornet sang 
sadly, and the sound was borne into the evening sky. 
Dasha took Katia’s hand and kissed it gently. 

“Katia,” she said, gazing at the setting sun that peeped 
through the branches y 4 ‘do you remember the poem;, 
‘Love o’ mine unfulfilled, Cooling in my heart’ ? I believe 
that if we are brave enough, we shall live to a time when 
we can love with eyes shut, without thinking and troub¬ 
ling. . . . We know now that there is nothing better 
on earth than love. I sometimes feel that if Ivan II- 
yitch were to come home, he would be a stranger to me. 
Now I love him in a kind of immaterial way, but I love 
him well and truly. We shall meet, however, as though 
we had loved each other in another life. We shall seem 
kindred and strange to each other at the same time. 
Don’t you think it’s a little terrifying? Something is 
going to happen, I know. I feel at times as if my heart 
were quite transparent.” 

Ekaterina Dmitrievna pressed her cheek against 
Dasha’s shoulder and said: 

“And my heart is so full of grief and pain that it 
seems to me quite old. My bloom is over and sterile.” 

“It’s a shame to talk like that, Katia!” 

“But we must be brave, my child.” 

It was on such an evening that a man in uniform sat 

[ 288 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 

down at the other end of their bench. The band was 
playing an old waltz. The lamps were lighted behind 
the trees and shone dimly as yet in the half light. The 
man on the bench stared so hard at Dasha that her 
neck grew uncomfortable. She turned and suddenly 
gave a low, frightened cry. 

“It can’t be!” 

Bezsonov was sitting beside her. He was thin and 
drawn and his leather coat hung on him like a sack. 
On his cap was a red cross. He rose and bowed silently. 
Dasha said, “How do you do?” and compressed her lips. 
Ekaterina Dmitrievna leaned back against the seat in 
the shadow of Dasha’s hat and shut her eyes. Bezsonov 
stared at the gravel beneath his feet. He seemed either 
dusty or unwashed, so grey did he look. 

“I saw you in the boulevard yesterday and the day 
before,” he said, raising his eyebrows, “but I dared not 
come near you. ... I am going to the front to fight 
tomorrow. You see they’ve come even to taking me.” 

“How can you be going to fight when you are in the 
Red Cross?” Dasha said with sudden irritation. 

“I allow the danger is comparatively less. But it’s 
all the same to me whether I am killed or not killed. . . . 
life is dull, Daria Dmitrievna.” He raised his head and 
looked at her lips with a heavy, dull gaze. “It’s so dull 
with nothing but corpses, corpses and corpses. ...” 

“Do you find that dull?” asked Katia without open¬ 
ing her eyes. 

“Very, Ekaterina Dmitrievna. I still retained some 
sorry hopes. . . . But with all these corpses and corpses, 
everything has gone to the devil. The civilization we 
created has turned out futile and illusive. Reality 
consists of corpses and blood—chaos. To be quite 
frank with you, Daria Dmitrievna, I sat down here with 

[ 289 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


the object of asking you to spare me half an hour.” 

“What for?” Dasha looked at his face, strange and 
unwholesome with the loose and cynical mouth. It 
struck her with a force that made her head go round 
that she was seeing the man for the first time. 

“I have thought a great deal about what happened in 
the Crimea,” Bezsonov said, frowning, “and I wanted 
to talk to you.” He slowly felt in the pocket of his 
leather coat for his cigarette-case. “I wanted to re¬ 
move certain prejudicial impressions. ...” 

Dasha half closed her eyes. There was no sign of 
magic attraction in the face. He was simply a man in 
the street. And she said resolutely: 

“I don’t think you and I can have anything to talk 
about.” 

She turned away. Katia’s arm trembled behind her 
back. Dasha coloured and frowned. 

“Good-bye, Alexis Alexeyevitch.” 

Bezsonov twisted his chapped, tobacco-stained lips into 
a smile, raised his cap and walked away. Dasha looked 
at his weak back, at his loose trousers, which seemed to 
be falling off him, at his heavy dusty boots. Was that 
indeed Bezsonov, the demon of her girlish nights? She 
felt a sudden intense pity for him. “Katia, wait for 
me; I’ll be back in a moment.” And she ran after Bez¬ 
sonov. He had turned down a side path. Panting, 
Dasha caught up with him and touched his sleeve. He 
turned round and compressed his lips. 

“Don’t be angry with me, Alexis Alexeyevitch.” 

“I am not angry. It was you who refused to talk 
to me.” 

“It was not that. . . .You misunderstood. I am 
quite kindly disposed towards you. ... I wish you all 
good things. ... As for what happened between us, 

[290 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


it is not worth bringing that back, is it? There is noth¬ 
ing left of the former. ... I was much to blame. I 
am so sorry for you. . . 

He shrugged his shoulders and stared beyond Dasha 
at the passers-by with a smile. 

“I thank you for your pity.” 

Dasha sighed. Had Bezsonov been a little boy, she 
would have taken him home and washed him in warm 
water and given him sweets to eat and not have let him 
go until pleasure had shone in his eyes. But as he was, 
what could she do with him? . . . Inventing his own 
pain and miserable and hurt and angry. 

“Alexis Alexeyevitch, if you would care to, do write 
to me every day. I will be sure to reply regularly,” 
Dasha said, looking up in his face with the kindliest ex¬ 
pression. 

He threw back his head and laughed a wooden, cyni¬ 
cal laugh. 

“Thank you. . . . It is a year now since I’ve got to 
hate ink and paper.” 

He clenched his teeth with a frown, as though he had 
swallowed some sour substance. 

“You must either be a saint or a fool, Daria Dmit¬ 
rievna. . . . Don’t mind what I say. . . . Like an in¬ 
fernal pain you have been sent to torment me in life. 
. . . For two years now I have lived like a monk. 
You have it now!” 

He made an effort to go, but could not move his 
feet from the spot. Dasha was standing with bent 
head. She had understood everything and was sad, 
but her heart was unclouded. Bezsonov gazed at her 
bent neck, at her virgin breast, visible through the open¬ 
ing of her white dress. He felt that this must be death. 

“Be merciful!” he said, in a soft human voice. “Yes, 

[291 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


yes/’ she murmured without raising her head, and walked 
away among the trees. For the last time, Bezsonov, 
with piercing glance, sought her fair head among the 
crowd. She did not turn. He rested a hand on a 
tree and his fingers dug into the green bark. The earth, 
that last resting place, was giving way beneath his feet. 


[ 292 ] 


XXV 


The dull disc of the moon hung above the desert peat 
bogs. The mist curled above the holes and ditches of 
abandoned trenches. Tree stumps projected everywhere 
and low-growing charred fir trees. It was damp and 
still. Across the narrow dam, in single file, horse fol¬ 
lowing horse, the hospital baggage-train trundled along. 
The front, which was their destination, lay some three 
versts from the jagged outline of the wood, from whence 
no sound came. 

In one of the carts Bezsonov lay on his back. He was 
covered with a horse-cloth that smelt of horse sweat. 
Every evening when the sun set his fever would begin. 
He shivered and his teeth chattered. The whole of his 
body seemed to dry up and with a cold effervescence, 
flitting, changing thoughts whirled clearly in his brain. 
He felt a wonderful sensation of losing physical sub¬ 
stance. 

He tucked the horse-cloth up to his chin and gazed at 
the misty, feverish sky. It was there that his earthly 
journey ended. Mist and moonlight and the rocking of 
the wagon like a cradle. Completing the cycle of a 
century, once more the creaking of Scythian chariots 
could be heard. Everything that had gone before was 
a dream, the Petersburg lights, the music in the hot, bril¬ 
liant halls, a woman’s hair flung over a pillow, the dark 
pupils of her eyes, the mortal despair of her gaze. . . . 
The dullness, the loneliness. . . . The dim light of his 
study, the tobacco smoke, the agitated beating of the 

[ 293 ] 


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heart and intoxication at the birth of words. ... A 
girl with white daisies fatally coming in from the lighted 
hall into his dark room, into his life. . . . And despair, 
despair, which covered his heart with a cold dust. . . . 
They were all dreams. . . . The wagon rocks. Beside 
him walks a bearded peasant with a cap over his eye; he 
has walked beside that cart for two thousand years. 
. . . There it lay, the endless stretch of time, in the 
mist of the moon. . . . Shadows move from the dark¬ 
ness of the ages, carts creak and the world is furrowed 
in black lines. Once more the Huns are walking over 
the earth. And in the dim mist, burning columns and 
smoke stretching to the sky and the creaking and jolt¬ 
ing of wheels. And the creaking grows louder and 
spreads, until the whole sky is filled with the rumbling 
noise. . . . 

Suddenly, the cart stopped. Above the noise which 
filled the white night, the voices of the men on the 
baggage-train were heard. Bezsonov raised himself on 
his elbow. Low above the wood a long body floated. It 
gleamed and shone in the moonlight. The throbbing of 
engines grew nearer and louder. A narrow shaft of 
light shot from its belly and ran across the bog, the 
stumps, the shattered trees and the fir-bush and struck 
the road by the wagons. 

Above the din, ta, ta, ta, came fainter sounds like the 
banging of a machine-gun. . . . Men came out of their 
wagons. The ambulance wagon swerved and rolled over 
in the bog. . . . About a hundred paces from Bezsonov, 
on the road, a blinding mass of light shot up. In a 
dark mass, horse and wagon rose in the air. A huge 
volume of smoke, a thundering crash and whirlwind and 
the whole baggage-train pitched forward. Horses with 
the foreparts of carriages galloped across the bog and 

[ 294 ] 


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men ran wildly. The wagon on which Bezsonov lay 
swerved and fell and Bezsonov rolled into a ditch. A 
heavy sack struck his back; he was completely covered 
with straw. 

The airship dropped another bomb and then the sound 
of its engines retreated and stopped altogether. Groan¬ 
ing, Bezsonov tried to dig his way out of the straw. 
With difficulty he crawled from beneath the baggage 
that had fallen on him. He shook himself and scrambled 
to the road. A few wagons were standing there with 
their foreparts gone. On the bog lay a horse in the 
shaft with its head thrown back, automatically twitch¬ 
ing its hind leg. Bezsonov touched his face and fore¬ 
head. There was a sticky place by his ear. He put his 
handkerchief on the scratch and walked away down the 
road towards the wood. From the shock of the fall 
and the fright his legs trembled so that he soon had to 
sit down on a rubbish heap. He would have liked some 
brandy, but the flask; had been left with the baggage in 
the cart. After some difficulty Bezsonov pulled some 
matches and a pipe out of his pocket and lighted up. 
The tobacco smoke tasted bitter and nasty. He remem¬ 
bered that he had a fever. He was in a bad plight. At 
any cost he must reach the wood where he had been 
told a battery was stationed. He rose, but his legs gave 
way beneath him. They felt so wooden that they would not 
movef below the knees. He sat down again and rubbed 
and stretched and pinched them and when he felt them 
ache, he rose, and walked on. 

The moon now stood high and the road, winding 
through the desert bog, seemed endless. He put his 
hands on the small of his back and staggered on, with 
difficulty lifting his heavy boots. Bezsonov began to 
talk to himself. 


[ 295 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


‘‘They take you and chuck you out. . . . There, drag 
yourself along, you dog, until the wheels go over you. 
. . . And how did I interfere with you, may I ask? All 
I did was to write verses and seduce stupid women. . . . 
But they would run after me. . . . And life was so dull. 
. . . Still, that was my own affair. . . . They take you 
and chuck you out. . . . Go, drag yourself along the 
bog and perish. . . . You can protest if you have a 
mind to. . . . Go on, protest, scream. . . . Scream, 
scream louder. . . .” 

Bezsonov turned suddenly. A grey shadow crept 
along the road. A cold shiver passed down his spine. 
He smiled and, shouting detached, incoherent phrases, 
he walked on in the middle of the road. After a while 
he turned again. Some fifty paces away a big-headed, 
long-legged dog slouched after him. 

“Damnation!” Bezsonov muttered and walked the 
faster, casting a glance over his shoulder again. There 
were five dogs in all, walking in single file, grey, with 
hanging jaws and backs. Bezsonov threw some stones 
at them. “Til . . . Get away, you filthy beasts!” 

The animals slouched down to the bog. Bezsonov 
filled his pockets with stones and threw them from time 
to time. He walked on whistling and yelling, “Hi 1 Hi!” 
The animals came on to the road again and walked in 
file, without coming any nearer. 

On either side of the road a low-growing fir wood 
commenced and at the bend, Bezsonov caught sight of 
a human figure in front of him. The figure stopped, 
glanced around and walked slowly away into the wood. 

“Damnation!” Bezsonov swore under his breath and 
also stepped into the shadow of the wood. He stood 
still for some time, trying to restrain the violent beating 
of his heart. The animals, too, stopped some distance 

[ 296 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


away. The foremost of them lay down with its jaws 
resting on its paws. The man in front made no move¬ 
ment. Bezsonov saw a white foam-like cloud pass across 
the moon, then there was a sound like a needle piercing 
his brain; it was the snap of a dry twig beneath the feet 
of the man. Bezsonov clenched his hands and in des¬ 
peration walked out quickly into the middle of the road. 
A tall soldier was standing to the right of him; he wore 
a long coat and his long face without any eyebrows 
seemed dead; it was grey and its mouth was half open. 

“Hi! you there!” Bezsonov cried; “what regiment 
are you from?” 

“From the second battery.” 

“Take me to the battery.” 

The soldier was silent and made no movement. He 
looked dully at Bezsonov and turned his face to the 
left. 

“What are those things down there ?*’ 

“Dogs,” Bezsonov replied impatiently. 

“Those aren’t dogs.” 

“Come on, show me the way.” 

“I won’t.” 

“Look here. I’ve got a fever. Do show me the way. 
I’ll give you some money.” 

“I won’t.” The soldier raised his voice. “I can’t go 
back; I’m a deserter.” 

“They’ll catch you anyhow, you fool.” 

“Perhaps.” 

Bezsonov looked over his shoulder. The animals had 
gone, probably into the wood. 

“Is it a long way to the battery?” 

The soldier did not reply. Bezsonov turned to go, 
but the man seized his sleeve by the elbow in fingers 
as stiff as pincers. 


[ 297 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


“You’re not going there. ...” 

“Let me go!” 

“I shan’t let you go!” Without releasing his arm, 
the soldier glanced to the side over the wood. “I haven’t 
eaten a bite for three days. ... I was asleep in a ditch 
a short while ago, when I heard some one coming. I 
thought it must be the patrol, so I lay still. They kept 
on coming, many of them, coming and coming; they 
rumbled all along the road. What could it be ? I crawled 
out of the ditch and looked. They walked in shrouds 
all over the road, no end of them. . . . They swayed 
like the mist and the ground shook beneath them . . .” 

“What are you talking about?” Bezsonov shouted in 
a wild voice and tried to tear himself away. 

“It’s the truth I’m telling you and you must believe 
me, you swine!” 

Bezsonov tore his arm away and ran, but his legs 
seemed to be made of cotton-wool. The soldier ran 
after him with his heavy boots and panting, seized him 
by the shoulder. Bezsonov fell and covered his head and 
neck with his hands. Panting, the soldier bore down 
on him, extending his stiff fingers to his throat ar\d 
squeezed it, till it grew silent and cold. 

“So that’s what you are, are you?” the soldier hissed, 
The body on the ground shuddered, stretched itself, col¬ 
lapsed and flattened in the dust. The soldier let it go. 
He got up and put on his cap. Without looking at what 
he had done, he walked away down the road. He stag¬ 
gered and shaking his head, sat down, his legs dangling 
in a ditch. 

“Oh, death!” he exclaimed slowly. “Oh, God, let me 
go! . . . It’s torture. ...” 


[ 298 ] 


XXVI 


After an unlucky attempt to escape from the con¬ 
centration camp, Ivan Ilyitch was removed to a fortress 
and placed in solitary confinement. There he planned 
another escape and for six weeks filed the gratings of 
his window. At the beginning of the summer, however, 
the fortress was unexpectedly evacuated and Teliegin 
found himself in what was known as “The Rotten Hole.” 
It was a horrible, miserable place. On a peat field in a 
wide valley stood a square of four barracks, surrounded 
by barbed wire. In the distance, by the hills, where the 
brick chimneys stood out, there began a single-track 
railway, the rusty lines of which stretched throughout 
the marsh and ended near the barracks in a deep hol¬ 
low, the work of the year before, on which over five 
thousand Russian soldiers had perished of typhoid and 
dysentery. On the other side of the dirty yellow valley, 
the uneven peaks of the purple Carpathians rose high, 
To the north of the barracks, immediately on the other 
side of the wire, numerous pine crosses stretched far 
in the distance across the marsh. The barracks were 
surrounded by a big yard with a well in the middle of 
it. Boards were thrown about the place, beneath which 
the brown liquid mud oozed. 

On hot days, steam rose from the valley, gadflies 
hummed, midges stuck to the face and the red, hazy 
sun steamed and decomposed that hopeless, desolate 
place. 

The Austrian military authorities intended to clear 

[ 299 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


“The Rotten Hole” of war prisoners after the epidemic, 
but pressed as they were by General Brusilov, they evacu¬ 
ated several camps and shoved into the deserted barracks 
a group of officers, about fifteen hundred men, who had 
been guilty of insubordination and attempted escape. 

The conditions were hard and the food was scarce. 
At six in the morning a loud drum would be sounded 
for rising, at seven bread was brought round and coffee 
made of acorns served without sugar. For lunch and 
dinner cooked vegetables were allowed. There was a 
roll-call three times a day and three times during the 
night. Half the officers were ill with stomach troubles, 
fevers, ulcers and rashes. In spite of everything, hope 
ran high in the camp. Brusilov, fighting stubbornly, was 
advancing, the French were beating the Germans in the 
Champagne district and at Verdun, and Asia Minor was 
cleared of Turks. The end of the war seemed to be 
really in sight. The prisoners in “The Rotten Hole” 
clenched their teeth and bore their privations. 

In the new year they would all be at home. 

But the summer had gone and the rains had come; 
Brusilov had stopped without taking Krakow or Lvov, 
the fierce battles on the French front had ceased. Alli¬ 
ance and Entente were licking their wounds. Clearly 
the end of the war had been put off till next autumn. 

A period of despair began in “The Rotten Hole.” 
Teliegin’s neighbor, Viskoboinikov, left off washing 
and shaving, lay for days at a time on his bunk with 
half shut eyes, refusing to answer questions. Now and 
again he would get up in exasperation and scratch him¬ 
self viciously with his nails. Red spots would appear 
and disappear on his body. One night he awoke Ivan II- 
yitch and asked in a hushed voice: 

“Are you married, Teliegin.” 

[ 300 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


“No.” 

“I’ve got a wife and daughter in Tver. You will let 
them know, won’t you?” 

“Don’t, Jakov Ivanovitch; go to sleep.” 

At three in the morning Viskoboinikov did not answer 
the roll-call. He was found in the water-closet, hanging 
on a thin, leather strap. The whole barrack rose up. 
The officers crowded round the body, which was lying 
on its back on the floor. The lantern, which stood at 
the head, shone on the bony face, distorted by the hor¬ 
rible pain and on his chest, on which, beneath the torn 
shirt, bloody scratches could be seen. A dirty light fell 
from the lantern, the faces of the living, bending over 
the corpse, were swollen and yellow and twisted. One 
man, Ensign Melshin, turned suddenly in the darkness 
of the barrack and said aloud, “Are we going to stand 
this, comrades?” 

A murmur rose from the crowd and from the bunks. 
The entrance door flew open and a sleepy Austrian of¬ 
ficer came in, the commandant of the camp. The crowd 
parted and allowed him to pass to the body. And in¬ 
stantly loud voices were raised. 

“We are not going to stand this!” 

“The man was tortured.” 

“That’s their system.” 

“I am also rotting alive.” 

“We won’t stand it, we must be moved from here.” 

“We are not criminals.” 

“The devils haven’t been beaten enough.” 

“Silence! To your places!” shouted the commandant, 
raising himself on tiptoe. 

“What? What does he say? Are we to be silent?” 

“To your places, you Russian swine!” 

Instantly, Sub-Captain Jukov, a short, thick-set man 

[301 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


with a tangled beard, pushed forward and poking a 
short finger at the Austrian’s nose, cried in a wailing 
voice: 

“Do you see this finger, you son of a dog? Do you 
see it?” And shaking his shaggy head he seized the 
commandant by the shoulders and shook him viciously. 
He knocked him down and fell on top of him. 

The officers crowded silently round the struggling 
men. The footsteps of soldiers could be heard running 
along the boards and the commandant cried for help. 
Teliegin,.who had so far been standing at the back of 
the crowd, pushed forward saying, “Are you mad? 
He’ll choke him!” and seizing Jukov by the shoulders 
he tore him away from the Austrian. 

“You blackguard!” Teliegin said to the commandant 
in German. Jukov was panting with wide open mouth. 

“Let me go! I’ll show the swine!” he said hoarse¬ 
ly. The commandant got up and casting a quick search¬ 
ing glance at the faces of Jukov, Teliegin, Melshin and 
two or three of the other officers standing near by, he 
clinked his spurs and walked out of the barrack. The 
officers wandered about the bunks, some lay down. All 
was still. 

It was clearly a question of mutiny and would be 
followed by a court martial. 

Ivan Ilyitch, as usual, began the day without omitting 
a single of his self-appointed tasks, which he had been 
observing now for over a year. At six in the morning 
he undressed naked, pumped some brownish, muddy 
water into a pail, sluiced and rubbed himself, did a hun¬ 
dred and one gymnastic exercises, taking care that his 
muscles cracked, then he dressed and shaved and as 
there was no coffee that day, he sat down on a hungry 
stomach to his German grammar. Afterwards he would 

[ 302 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


usually take a walk, have luncheon, then half an hour’s 
rest, then study English and French, then dinner, then 
half an hour’s game of preference or chess, then another 
hundred and one gymnastic exercises, then sleep. 

Such a regulation of time filled the whole day and left 
not a spare moment in which to give way to depression. 
His body and will were hardened, every softening of 
the spirit he resolutely crushed. 

The hardest and most devastating thing of all for the 
prisoners to bear was continence. Many a man came 
to grief over it. One man would begin to powder him¬ 
self and to paint his eyes and eyebrows and go about 
for days whispering with another fellow powdered like 
himself. Another man would avoid all contact with his 
fellows, lie with covered head among the rags, unwashed 
and unkempt. Another would use filthy language, an¬ 
noy people with disgusting stories and in the last stages, 
make such an obscene display that he would be removed 
to the hospital. 

Strictness was the only salvation against these things. 
During his captivity Teliegin grew very taciturn. His 
muscular body grew wiry, his movements angular. His 
eyes lost their lustre and seemed to be paler, animated 
only by a cold, determined light. In moments of anger 
they looked terrible. 

On that day, Teliegin repeated the German words he 
had copied more diligently than usual, then he opened 
a tattered volume of Spielhagen. Jukov came up and sat 
down beside him on the bunk. Ivan Ilyitch continued to 
read softly to himself without turning. Jukov sighed. 

“I want to make out that I’m mad at the trial, Ivan 
Ilyitch,” he said. 

Teliegin gave him a quick look. Jukov’s rosy, kindly 
face, with the broad nose and curly beard and soft warm 

[303 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


lips seen through his big moustache, was hanging guiltily. 
His fair eyelids blinked. 

“What the devil made me go and poke my finger at 
him? I don’t know what I expected to get by it! If 
you fellows would only curse me instead of being silent! 
I know it’s my fault, Ivan Ilyitch. I would go and poke 
that finger of mine. I shall say that I’m mad. What 
do you think?” 

“Now look here, Jukov,” Teliegin said, shutting his 
book with a finger inside it, “some of us are bound to 
be shot. You know that, don’t you?” 

“I do.” 

“Then would it not be as well not to play the fool at 
the trial, eh?” 

“You are right.” 

“We none of us blame you. Only the price to be paid 
for the pleasure of hitting an Austrian in the jaw is 
rather a high one.” 

“And what must I feel about it, Ivan Ilyitch, to have 
brought this on you?” Jukov waved a clenched fist and 
shook his hairy head. “If only the swine would bowl 
me over alone, I shouldn’t mind it so much.” 

Jukov went on talking in this strain for a long time, 
but Teliegin took no further notice of him and went on 
reading Spielhagen. After a time he got up and stretched 
himself, cracking his muscles. The door flew wide open 
and four soldiers with fixed bayonets came in and placed 
themselves on either side of the doorway, clinking the 
bars of their rifles. Immediately there entered a ser¬ 
geant-major, a gloomy man with a bandaged eye, who 
stared round the barrack and curled the ends of his 
moustache. He called out in a hoarse, angry voice, 
“Sub-Captain Jukov! Lieutenant Melshin! Sub-Lieuten¬ 
ant Ivanov! Sub-Lieutenant Ubeiko!' Ensign Teliegin!” 

[ 304 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


The men whose names had been called came up. The 
sergeant-major examined them carefully. The soldiers 
surrounded them and led them across the barrack yard 
to a small wooden house, where the commandant lived. 
A newly arrived military car was standing by the door. 
The spikes covering the entrance of the barbed wire en¬ 
closure were removed. A sentry stood by a striped 
sentry-box. Lounging on the seat at the wheel of the 
car was a young officer with a swarthy, ape-like face, 
the large peak of his cap pulled low over one eye. Tel- 
iegin touched Melshin’s elbow. Melshin was walking 
beside him. 

“Can you drive a car?” Teliegin asked. 

“Yes. Why ?” 

“Sh. ...” 

They were brought to the commandant’s house. At a 
pine-wood table, covered with clean, pink blotting paper, 
sat three Austrian senior officers, who had just arrived 
for the trial. One of them, a clean-shaven man with 
purple patches on his thick neck, was smoking a cigar. 
Teliegin noticed that he did not even look at the incom¬ 
ing men. His hands were on the table with locked fin¬ 
gers, fat and hairy; his eyes were half closed to shield 
them from the smoke, his collar dug into his neck. “This 
. man has already made up his mind,” Teliegin thought. 

The presiding judge was a thin old man with a long, 
sad face, a few well smoothed wrinkles and a thick, 
grey moustache. One eyebrow was raised by a mon¬ 
ocle. He looked intently at the accused men and, through 
the monocle, fixed his large grey eye on Teligin. The 
eye was clear, intelligent and kindly. His moustache 
trembled and he lowered his head. 

“That looks bad,” Ivan Ilyitch thought and turned to 
the third judge, before whom lay a pair of tortoise- 

[ 305 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


shell spectacles and several square sheets of closely writ¬ 
ten paper. He was a short man with a yellowish skin, 
a receding forehead, stubbly hair like a hedgehog’s and 
ears as large as dumplings. He was frowning as from 
acute indigestion. This officer looked as if he had been 
unlucky in everything. 

When the accused men were placed round the table, 
he put on his round spectacles, smoothed the sheets of 
paper with a withered hand, coughed, exposing thereby 
his false, yellow teeth, and began to read the indictment. 

On one side of the table, with twitching eyebrows and 
compressed lips, sat the commandant. Teliegin strained 
every effort to follow the words of the indictment, but 
contrary to his will, his thoughts were working in an¬ 
other direction. 

“When the body of the suicide was taken into the 
barrack, some of the Russians, making this a pretext, in¬ 
cited the others to open rebellion. They swore and used 
filthy language and shook their fists. Lieutenant Mel- 
shin had an open penknife in his hand.” 

Teliegin could see the boy chauffeur through the win¬ 
dow. He was picking his nose, then he turned on the 
seat and completely covered his face with his cap. Two 
short soldiers in blue coats approached the car and be¬ 
gan to examine it; one man, sittting down, poked the 
tires with his fingers. They both turned. A kitchen 
was wheeled into the yard, the smoke rising from its 
chimney. The kitchen was turned to the barrack and 
the soldiers lazily followed it. The chauffeur neither 
moved nor turned. He was probably asleep. Teliegin 
bit his nails in his impatience. Once more he turned his 
attention to the prosecutor’s rasping voice. 

“The said Sub-Captain Jukov, with the obvious in¬ 
tention of threatening the life of the commandant, first 

[ 306 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 

attempted to seize the commandant’s nose between his 
fingers, which act could have had no other purpose than 
that of casting dishonour on the Imperial Royal uni¬ 
form. ...” 

At these words, the commandant rose, red in the face, 
and began to explain the rather incomprehensible tale of 
Jukov’s finger. Jukov attempted to put in a word, 
looking with a kindly guilty smile at his comrades, but 
unable to contain himself any longer, he turned to the 
prosecutor and burst out in Russian: 

“Will you allow me to explain, sir? . . .1 said to 
him: ‘Why do you treat us like this? Why?’ I’m sorry 
I can’t explain in German. . . . And I pointed my 
finger. ...” 

“Do shut up, Jukov!” Ivan Ilyitch hissed. The presi¬ 
dent knocked on the table with his pencil. The prose¬ 
cutor went on reading. 

He described how Jukov had seized the commandant 
and in what particular part of his body and “knocking 
him on his back, he squeezed his throat with large fin¬ 
gers with intent to cause death.” The colonel then went 
on to the more doubtful part of the indictment. “The 
Russians, pushing and shouting, egged the murderer on 
and one of them, Ensign Ivan Teliegin, on hearing the 
soldiers come running up, dashed with bloodthirsty impa¬ 
tience to the spot, shoved Jukov aside, and but a moment 
separated the commandant from death.” At this point the 
prosecutor stopped, unable to keep back a smile of self- 
satisfaction. “But the guard came in just then”—their 
names followed—“and Teliegin could only shout ‘Black¬ 
guard !’ to his victim.” 

After this there followed an amusing psychological 
examination of Teliegin’s conduct, “a man who had 
twice attempted to escape and had not stopped even at 
filing the bars of his window.” 


[ 307 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


The colonel charged Jukov and Teliegin uncondition¬ 
ally and Melshin, “according to the testimony of the wit¬ 
nesses/’ with incitement to murder and with flourishing 
his penknife, and, to give more point to the indictment, 
he stated that Ivanov and Ubeiko had “acted while in 
a condition of insanity.” 

When the prosecutor had finished reading, the com¬ 
mandant confirmed all his statements. The soldiers were 
examined. In their opinion, the three first charged were 
guilty, but they did not know about the other two. The 
president rubbed his hands and suggested that Ivanov 
and Ubeiko should be acquitted, owing to lack of evi¬ 
dence against them. The red-faced officer, who had by 
now smoked his cigar down to the very end, nodded his 
approval, and after some hesitation, the prosecutor also 
agreed. Two of the convoys shouldered arms. 

Teliegin said, “Good-bye, comrades.” Ivanov turned 
green and dropped his head and Ubeiko gazed at Ivan 
Uyitch in silent horror. When they had been led out 
the president turned to the men charged. 

“Are you guilty of inciting to mutiny and of attempt¬ 
ing to kill the commandant of the camp?” he asked 
Teliegin. 

“No.” 

“What have you to say in your defence?” 

“The indictment is false from beginning to end.” 

“Have you anything more to say?” 

“Nothing.” 

As he walked away from the table, Teliegin looked in¬ 
tently at Jukov. The latter coloured, but when he was 
questioned, he replied word for word as Teliegin had done. 
Melshin also replied in a similar way. The president lis¬ 
tened to them, shutting his eyes wearily. The judge at 
last rose and went into the next room. As he reached 

[308 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


the door, the red-faced officer who was the last to go 
out, spat out his cigar and stretched himself agreeably. 

“There is no doubt that we shall be found guilty. I 
saw that as soon as we came in,” Teliegin whispered and 
turning to the convoy, asked him for a glass of water. 

The soldier walked quickly up to the table, put down 
his rifle and poured some dirty-looking water from a 
bottle. Ivan Ilyitch whispered hastily into Melshin’s 
ear. 

“When we are led past the car, try and set the engine 
going. Say something or other to the convoy in Rus¬ 
sian and don’t mind any untoward movement.” 

“I follow,” Melshin whispered in reply and shut his 
eyes. 

The judges immediately appeared and seated them¬ 
selves in their former places. The president slowly took 
off his monocle and holding a crumpled piece of paper 
which trembled slightly close to his eye, he read the brief 
sentence, by which Jukov, Teliegin and Melshin were 
condemned to death by shooting. 

Ivan Ilyitch, though he felt sure what the sentence 
would be beforehand, yet when the words were pro¬ 
nounced, felt sick and the blood rushed from his heart. 
Jukov dropped his head and Melshin, a tall, big-boned, 
blue-eyed youth, licked his lips slowly and stepped from 
one foot to the other. 

The president wiped his weary eyes and covered them 
with the palm of his hand; then he said slowly and 
distinctly: “The commandant is to carry out the sen¬ 
tence immediately.” 

The judges rose. The commandant sat for a moment 
or two longer, green ini the face, with outstretched legs; 
then he, too, rose, and pulling down his spotless uni¬ 
form, in an exaggeratedly harsh voice, he ordered the 

[309 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


remaining convoys to lead out the condemned men. 
Teliegin managed to linger in the doorway so as to 
allow Melshin to pass out first. Melshin, seeming to 
collapse entirely, caught the convoy by the sleeve and 
began to jabber to him in Russian: 

“Come, please come over there, a little further . . . 
I’ve got the stomach-ache, I can’t stand it.” . . . 

The soldier stared at him in astonishment. He gave 
a frightened glance over his shoulder, at a loss! what to 
do in such a contingency. Melshin, however, had man¬ 
aged to drag him to the front of the car, where he 
squatted down and made faces and groaned and tore 
with trembling fingers first at the buttons of his clothes, 
then at the handle of the car. The convoy’s face ex¬ 
pressed pity and disgust. 

“Got the stomach-ache? Sit down, then!” he said 
angrily. “Look sharp!” 

But Melshin seemed doubled up with the gripes. He 
ground his teeth and gave a furious turn of the engine 
handle. The soldier was alarmed and tried to pull him 
away. The boy chauffeur awoke and jumped out of the 
car, cursing furiously. Teliegin kept close to the second 
convoy, keeping a keen lookout on all Melshin’s doings. 
At last the engine began to throb and his own heart beat 
violently in measure. 

“Jukov, you get the rifle!” Teliegin yelled, seizing his 
convoy round the middle and hurling him to the ground. 
With a bound he reached the car, where Melshin was 
struggling with the soldier for the possession of the 
rifle. Ivan Ilyitch, with the full force of his bound, 
struck the soldier’s neck with his fist. The man groaned 
and sat down. Melshin dashed to the wheel and pressed 
the lever. Ivan Ilyitch could see Jukov climbing into the 
car with the rifle and the chauffeur stealing along the 

[ 310 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 

wall to the commandant’s door. A long, distorted face 
with a monocle appeared at the window, the stubby fig¬ 
ure of the commandant dashed out with a revolver in his 
hand. Then came flash, report, flash, report. . . . 

“Missed! Missed ! Missed !” The heart stopped beating. 
The wheels of the car seemed to have grown into the 
ground. At last the engine throbbed, the car moved, 
Teliegin fell back on the leather seat. They were cut¬ 
ting through the wind more quickly; they had reached 
the striped sentry-box; the sentry was aiming. Like a 
storm the car dashed past him. Soldiers rushed out and 
fell on their knees. “Bang! bang! bang!” came the faint 
sound of firing. Jukov turned and shook his fist at 
them. The gloomy square of barracks grew smaller, 
lower, and the camp was hidden from view at the bend. 
Posts and trees and the figures on the milestones came 
rushing toward them. 

Melshin turned. His forehead, eyes and cheeks were 
covered with blood. 

“Straight on?” he asked Teliegin. 

“Straight across the bridge, then to the left, to the 
hills.” 


[311 ] 


XXVII 


Gloomy and desolate are the Carpathians on a windy 
autumn evening. Troubled and anxious were the hearts 
of the fugitives when they reached the crest along the 
white, rain-washed road. Some three or four pine trees, 
bare to their topmost branches, were swaying above a 
ravine. In the mist below a faint murmur rose from a 
barely visible wood. Lower still, at the very bottom of 
the ravine water roared and splashed among the stones. 

Through the trunks of the pines, far beyond the 
wooded, desert mountain tops, a long streak of purple 
sunset glowed among the leaden clouds. A strong wind 
blew freely on that height; forgotten memories whistled 
in the ears; the apron of the car flapped to and fro. 

The fugitives were silent. Teliegin studied a map and 
Melshin, his elbows resting on the wheel, stared in the 
direction of the setting sun. His head was bandaged 
with a rag. 

“What are we to do with the car?” he asked quietly. 
“There is no more petrol.” 

“We can’t leave it here, by God!” Teliegin replied. 

“We can pitch it down the ravine.” Melshin jumped 
to the ground with a groan and stamped up and down 
to stretch his legs, then he shook Jukov by the shoulders. 
“Wake up, Captain, we’ve arrived!” 

Without opening his eyes Jukov jumped into the road, 
stumbled and sat down on the stones. Again he nodded 
his head. They gave him a dose of brandy. From the 
car Ivan Ilyitch took out some leather cloaks and a 

[ 312 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


basket of provisions, which had been intended for the 
judges’ dinner at “The Rotten Hole.” They filled their 
pockets with the provisions, put on the cloaks and taking 
hold of the wings of the car they pushed it to the edge 
of the ravine. 

“You’ve served your turn, my dear,” Melshin said. 
“Forward! Together! Again!” 

The front wheels were suspended above the ravine. 
The long, dusty car, covered with leather and mounted 
with bronze, obedient like a living creature, heeled over 
and crashed below with the stones and rubble. For a 
moment it caught on a projecting rock, trembled, and 
then, amid the thunder of flying stones and broken iron, 
it crashed to the torrents below. 

The fugitives turned into the woods and walked along 
parallel to the road. It was now quite dark. The 
pines overhead rustled solemnly with a sound like that 
of a distant waterfall, sad and eternal. 

Teliegin moved to the road from time to time to 
look at the milestones. They skirted one place, where 
they supposed there was a militia station, climbing over 
ravines, striking against fallen trees, stumbling into 
mountain streams and getting soaked and torn. They 
walked the whole of the night. 

Once, it was almost at dawn, they heard the sound 
of a car and hid in a ditch, as it passed so close that 
they could hear the voices of the people inside. 

In the morning the fugitives chose a place to rest in a 
densely wooded ravine by a stream. They half emptied 
the flask of brandy and Jukov asked to be shaved with 
a razor which they had found in the car. When they 
had divested him of his beard and moustache, he was 
found to have a childish chin and full, big lips, which 
pouted like the mouth of a jug. Teliegin and Melshin 

[ 313 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


pointed their fingers at him and laughed for a long time. 
Jukov was delighted. He bellowed and shook his head. 
He was a little drunk from the brandy. They covered 
him up with leaves and bade him go to sleep. 

Teliegin and Melshin afterwards spread the map on 
the grass and each made a small topographical copy for 
himself. They had made up their minds to separate on 
the morrow, Melshin and Jukov to go> to Roumania and 
Teliegin to Galicia. The big map was buried in the 
ground. They collected a pile of leaves and nestled 
down among them, falling asleep immediately. 

It was three o’clock in the afternoon. At the top of 
the ravine, on a high rock, a man stood leaning on his 
rifle. It was the sentry guarding the bridge. Around 
him and in the wooded waste at his feet it was still; the 
silence was broken only by a heavy woodcock flying 
across the field and striking its wing against a tree and 
by the distant sound of slowly falling water. After a 
time the sentry walked away, shouldering his rifle. 

It was night when Ivan Ilyitch opened his eyes. 
Through the still, black branches of the trees, the stars 
shimmered, big and clear. 

He raised himself and looked about him and once 
more lay down on his back. He recalled the events of 
yesterday, but the mental strain of the trial and the flight 
was so great that he tried to banish all thoughts of them. 

Overhead, in a small constellation, a star shone with 
a blue light. The blue ray had left it a thousand years 
ago, and now entered the eye and heart of Ivan Ilyitch. 
This star and the Milky Way and the countless constel¬ 
lations were but a grain of sand in the heavenly sea. 
And in the distance were dark chasms looking like sacks 
of coal—depths leading to eternity. And the stars and 

[314 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


the black chasms were in Ivan Ilyitch’s warm heart that 
beat among the dry leaves. 

It may be that the star dust of a million worlds went 
to the making of the small atom of a heart that lived by 
the sheer will to love. As the mysterious, insensible 
starlight bathed the earth, so the heart sent out its in¬ 
visible light—the longing for love—to meet it, refusing 
to believe that it was small and mortal. It was a divine 
moment. 

“Are you asleep, Ivan Ilyitch?” Melshin asked quietly. 

“No; I have been awake a long time. We must get 
up. You wake the Captain. We ought to be making a 
move. ,, 

Within an hour Ivan Ilyitch was walking alone down 
the white road, in the darkness. 


[ 315 ] 


XXVIII 


On the tenth day Ivan Ilyitch had reached the lines 
near the front. He was only able to walk at night then. 
As soon as it was light he would go into the woods 
and when he was forced to walk in the valleys he would 
choose for a night shelter a place as far as possible 
removed from habitation. He lived on vegetables, which 
he stole from kitchen gardens. 

The night was rainy and cold. Ivan Ilyitch was walk¬ 
ing along the road among the hospital wagons, loaded 
with wounded going west and carts with household goods 
and crowds of women and old men, who carried babies 
and bundles and utensils in their arms. 

Coming east to meet them were the military baggage- 
train and the troop units. It was strange to reflect that 
the years 1914, 1915 had gone and that 1916 was drawing 
to a close and still the baggage-carts rumbled over the 
rough road and the population of burnt villages wandered 
in meek despair. Only now the military horses could 
scarcely move their legs, the troops looked tattered and 
shrunken and the crowd of homeless were silent and in¬ 
different. And in the east, whence a strong wind was 
sweeping the low clouds, fighting was still going on, men 
fighting men who had ceased to be enemies, unable to 
exterminate one another. 

In the swampy valley, a mob of people and carts 
moved in the darkness over the bridge across the swell¬ 
ing river. Wheels rumbled, whips cracked, orders were 
shouted, numerous lanterns swung, their light falling on 
the dark water, rushing between the stakes. 

[ 816 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


Gliding along the slope by the road, Ivan Ilyitch 
reached the bridge. 

A military cart went past him. He would not have 
thought of crossing to the other side earlier in the day. 
At the bridge-head the horses strained against the shafts, 
digging their hoofs into the sopping boards, unable to 
drag out their heavy loads. By the bridge was a man on 
horseback, in a cloak which flapped in the wind. He car¬ 
ried a lantern and yelled in a hoarse voice. An old man 
approached him and touched his cap, wanting to ask him 
something, no doubt. Instead of replying, the horseman 
struck him in the face with the hilt of his sword and 
the man rolled over among the wheels. The other end 
of the bridge was lost in the darkness, but by the nu¬ 
merous moving lanterns thousands of refugees must have 
been walking there. The baggage-train moved slowly. 
Ivan Ilyitch was pressed against a cart, in which sat a 
thin woman, wrapped in a blanket, with hair hanging 
over her eyes. In one hand she held a bird cage, in the 
other she held the reins. The stream of carts came to a 
sudden standstill. The woman turned her head in horror. 
From the other end of the bridge a sound of voices was 
heard, and lanterns swung quickly. Something must have 
happened. A horse screamed wildly, as only an animal 
can. Some one cried: “Save yourselves!” and a rifle 
report rent the air. Horses reared, carts shook, women 
and children howled and screamed. 

Intermittent flashes came from the distance to the 
right, it was the counter firing. The heart beat like a 
hammer. 

They seemed to be firing all over the river. The 
woman with the bird cage scrambled out of the cart. 
Her skirt caught on something and she fell, crying in a 

[3171 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


deep voice: “Save me!” The bird with the cage rolled 
down the slope. 

Amidst cries and jolting the baggage-train moved on 
again across the bridge. Ivan Ilyitch saw a large cart 
heel over at the edge of the bridge and crash through 
the railings into the river. At that moment he jumped 
from the wheel on which he had been sitting, dashed over 
the scattered bundles and catching up a moving cart he 
threw himself into it on his back. Instantly the scent of 
baked bread reached his nostrils. He put his hand under 
the tarpaulin and broke off a chunk from the end of a 
round loaf. He nearly choked in his eagerness to eat it. 

In the confusion which followed the firing, the bag¬ 
gage-train crossed the bridge to the other side of the 
river. Ivan Ilyitch got out of the cart and wound his way 
among the refugees and vehicles to the fields, through 
which he walked parallel to the road. From bits of con¬ 
versation he had caught in the darkness, he gathered 
that the firing had come from the enemy, that is, Russian 
scouts. 

The front was no more than ten versts away. 

Now and again Ivan Ilyitch stopped to take breath. 
It was hard walking against the wind and rain. His 
knees wobbled, his face burned, his eyes were red and 
swollen. He sat down at last on the edge of a ditch 
and put his head in his hands. Cold raindrops fell down 
his neck, his body ached as though crushed by wheels. 

Suddenly a muffled sound reached him, which seemed 
like the opening of the earth in the distance. In a mo¬ 
ment a similar sigh broke the night. Ivan Ilyitch raised 
his head and listened. Between the sighs a muffled 
murmuring was borne to him, which now lessened, now 
increased to an angry rumble. The sounds came from 

[ 318 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


the left, almost from the opposite direction to that in 
which Ivan Ilyitch was going. 

He seated himself on the other side of the ditch. He 
could now see clearly low-hanging, broken clouds flying 
over the iron-grey sky. It was the dawn. The east. 
Russia was over there. 

Ivan Ilyitch rose and tightened his belt. He stretched 
his legs in the mud and set out in an easterly direction, 
walking through wet stubble, ditches and the partly cov¬ 
ered remains of last year’s trenches. When it was light 
at the end of the field he again saw the road full of peo¬ 
ple and carts. He stopped and looked about him. On 
one side, beneath a tall half-bare tree stood a white 
chapel. 

The door was open; the roof and ground were strewn 
with dead leaves. 

Ivan Ilyitch resolved to stay there until it was dark. 
He went in and lay down on the moss-covered floor with 
his face to the wall. The rumbling of wheels and crack¬ 
ing of whips were borne from the distance. The sounds 
were strangely pleasant, but were suddenly broken off. 
Fingers seemed to press his eyelids. In his heavy sleep 
a living point gradually grew. It tried to turn into the 
image of a dream, but could not. So great was his ex¬ 
haustion that Ivan Ilyitch groaned and turned his head, 
sinking deeper into the soft abysses of sleep. The point 
appeared again, troubled, as though at something that 
had happened. His heart was full of tears. Sleep was 
lighter now and the rumbling of distant wheels heard 
once more. Ivan Ilyitch sat up and looked around. 
Through the doorway, dull, heavy clouds could be seen 
and the sun, setting in the west, cast broad rays beneath 
their leaden, watery bases. A liquid patch of light shone 

[ 319 ] 


I 

I 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


on the crumbling chapel wall, lighting up the bent head 
of a faded wooden figure of the Virgin Mother sur¬ 
rounded by a halo. The Holy Child, wrapped in faded 
chrism-cloth, lay on her knees and His hand, extended 
in blessing, was broken off. 

Ivan Ilyitch made the sign of the cross quickly and 
walked out of the chapel. On a stone step at the entrance 
sat a young, fair-haired woman with a baby on her lap. 
She wore a white mud-bespattered overcoat. One hand 
supported her cheek, the other rested on the gaily col¬ 
oured blanket wrapped around the baby. She raised her 
head slowly and looked at Ivan Ilyitch—her glance was 
strangely bright—and her tear-stained face twitched as 
though with a smile. In a soft voice she said simply 
in Russian: “The boy is dead.” And again she leaned 
her head on her hand. 

Teliegin bent over her and caressed her hair. She 
sighed and the tears rolled down her cheeks. 

“Come; I will carry him for you,” he said kindly. But 
the woman shook her head. 

“Where can I go? You go alone, kind sir, and God 
be with you.” 

Ivan Ilyitch regarded her for a moment, then pulled 
his cap over his eyes and walked away. Just then, from 
the back of the chapel, two Austrian field gendarmes gal¬ 
loped up. They were big-whiskered, dark men, in soaked, 
dirty coats. As they passed Ivan Ilyitch they looked at 
him and reined in their horses. The one in front called 
in a hoarse voice: “Come here!” 

Ivan Ilyitch came up. The gendarme leant from the 
saddle and looked at him searchingly with piercing eyes, 
swollen from the wind and lack of sleep. They sud¬ 
denly kindled merrily. 

[320 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


“A Russian!” he cried, seizing Teliegin by the collar. 
Ivan Ilyitch made no attempt to get away. He smiled a 
crooked smile. 


Teliegin was locked in a shed some three versts away. 
It was already night. From the distance came a sound 
of gun firing. Through the cracks in the wall of wood 
a dull red glow could be seen in the east. Ivan Ilyitch 
ate up the remaining piece of bread which he had taken 
from the cart, then he made the round of the walls to 
find a place through which he could get out. He stum¬ 
bled against a bundle of hay, yawned and lay down. He 
was not able to sleep, though. Four guns began to boom 
soon after midnight at no great distance away. Flashes 
of red came through the crevices. Ivan Ilyitch got up 
and listened. The intervals between the booms of each 
gun grew less and the walls of the shed shook. Sud¬ 
denly, quite close, single rifle reports rang out. 

The fighting was clearly drawing nearer. Outside, agi¬ 
tated voices could be heard and the throbbing of a motor¬ 
car. There was a stampede of many feet. Ivan Ilyitch 
then realized that they were firing on the shed. He lay 
down on the floor behind a bundle of straw. 

There was a smell of powder smoke in the shed. The 
firing went on incessantly. The Russians were apparently 
advancing with great speed. The volume of sound that 
rent the heart did not last long, however. The bursting 
of hand grenades was heard, which sounded like a crack¬ 
ing of nuts. Ivan Ilyitch sprang up and groped along the 
wall. They were not going to kill him, were they? At 
last came a piercing shriek, a roar and a stampede of feet. 
The firing ceased. A few grenades exploded. In the 
long moment’s lull iron blows were heard on something 

[ 321 ] 



THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


soft. Then came frightened cries: “We surrender, Rus¬ 
sians, Russians!” 

Ivan Ilyitch tore away a splinter of wood and could 
see running figures, some covering their heads with their 
hands. From the right huge masses of cavalry dashed 
among the crowd. “Stop! stop! we surrender!” the run¬ 
ning figures cried. Three men turned towards the shed. 
After them came a horseman, hatless, with a big Cau¬ 
casian cowl flying behind him. He was mounted on a 
huge beast, which snorted and reared heavily. Like a 
man drunk, the horseman flourished his sword, open- 
mouthed. With a swish, he lunged out, but the horse 
made a forward movement and the blade split. 

“Let me out!” Teliegin cried in a strange voice, bang¬ 
ing on the door. The man reined in the horse. 

“Who is that?” 

“A prisoner. A Russian officer.” 

“One moment.” The horseman bent down and with 
the hilt of his sword drew back the bolts. Ivan Ilyitch 
came out and the man who had opened the door, the 
officer of the savage division, said with a sarcastic smile: 
“What a place to meet in, to be sure!” 

Ivan Ilyitch looked at him. 

“I don’t know you.” 

“I am Sapojkov, Sergei Sergeyevitch.” He laughed a 
hoarse, rasping laugh. “Hang it, it would have been a 
splendid thing, eh? A pity my sword was broken.” 


[322 ] 


XXIX 


For the last hour of the journey to Moscow the train 
rolled shrieking past deserted country houses. The smoke 
from the engine mingled with the autumn leaves, with 
the transparent yellow of the birch, with the purple of 
the aspen tree, from the neighbourhood of which a smell 
of mushrooms was wafted. The red branches of the 
maple, here and there, hung over the very railway. Seen 
through a bare bush were glass balls on a flower bed; the 
country cottages had their shutters closed and the paths 
and the steps were strewn with leaves. 

They were now passing an intermediate station, where 
two soldiers with kit-bags stared open-mouthed at the 
carriage windows and a forlorn, God-forsaken girl, in a 
shabby check coat, was tracing a pattern on the wet plat¬ 
form with the end of her umbrella. Here, at the bend, 
was a wooden hoarding, depicting a large bottle, beneath 
which was printed “Matchless Riabinovaya Shustova.” 
The woods ended and long lines of bright green cabbages 
stretched to right and left. At a turnpike stood a hay 
cart and women and peasants in short coats were tugging 
a grey, obstinate horse by the bridle. And in the distance, 
beneath the long clouds, sharp-pointed spires were visible 
and high above the town were the five shining balls of 
St. Savior’s. 

Teliegin was lounging by the carriage window, breath¬ 
ing in the laden October air, the scent of leaves, the 
smell of decaying mushrooms, the smoke of burning 
straw and the fragrance of the earth on a frosty dawn. 

[ 323 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


Behind him lay the hard road of two years of suffer¬ 
ing, and he felt that the end of it lay in this wonderful 
hour of expectancy. Ivan Ilyitch reckoned that sharp on 
the stroke of three he would press the bell of the only 
door (he imagined it to be of light oak, with two windows 
over the top). Had he been dead, he would have dragged 
himself to that door. 

The fields of vegetables ended. They were flying by 
the mud-bespattered houses of a suburb, past the roughly 
paved streets with the rumbling carts, past the fences and 
gardens of old lime trees, which stretched their branches 
to the middle of the road, past the medley of sign boards 
and the passers-by, who were bent on their own silly busi¬ 
ness, and paid no heed to the rolling train, nor to Ivan 
Ilyitch at the carriage window. Below, a toylike tram- 
car was running up the street, and then there was a little 
church, hemmed in by houses. Ivan Ilyitch crossed him¬ 
self quickly. The wheels rattled over a siding. At last, 
after two long years of absence, he was gliding by the 
windows of the asphalt platform of the Moscow railway 
station. Well-kempt and indifferent old men in clean 
white aprons dashed into the carriages. Ivan Ilyitch put 
his head far out of the window. How foolish of him! 
He had not informed them of his arrival. 

With a cheap-looking suit-case, purchased in Kiev, 
Ivan Ilyitch walked out of the station and could not 
keep himself from laughing aloud. In the square, some 
fifty paces away, stood a long line of izvozchiks. They 
gesticulated with their long sleeves, crying: 

“I can take you! I can take you! I can take you l” 

“What do you want with a piebald beast, sir, when 
here is a fine black one?” 

‘Til take you, sir! I’ll take you!” 

[324 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 

“Where are you going to, you damned fool? Whoa, 
back 1” t , . 

“Mine’s a fast horse, sir!” 

Reined back, the horses stamped and snorted. The 
square was filled with cries. In one more moment it 
seemed the whole line of izvozchiks would dash into the 
railway station. 

Ivan Ilyitch mounted a high trap with a high seat, 
driven by a smart driver, an insolent peasant with a 
handsome face, who asked the address with kindly indul¬ 
gence and for greater “swank” started off at a gallop, sit¬ 
ting sideways with the reins loose in his left hand. The 
tires jolted over the cobblestones. 

“Just back from the war, sir?” 

“I was a prisoner and escaped.” 

“Really? How are things with them? Some say 
they’ve got nothing to eat. Mind, Granny! . . . You’re 
a national hero. . . . Many of our men run away be¬ 
cause there is nothing to eat there. . . . Look out, car¬ 
ter! . . . Ah, the boor! He’s filled himself with home¬ 
made vodka. . . . Have you heard of Ivan Trifonitch?” 

“Which one ?” 

“The one from Rasgulia, who deals in carbolic or sul¬ 
phur. . . . He came to me complaining yesterday. . . . 
‘What a business, to be sure! He’s made such a pile on 
contracting, he doesn’t know what to do with his money 
and his wife ran away with a little Pole three days ago. 
She didn’t run far, either. Only to the Petersburg Park, 
to Jan. The next day the izvozchiks had got the story 
all over the town and Ivan Trifonitch can’t so much as 
show himself in the street, for everyone laughs at him. 
. . . That’s what you get when you rob and get rich. . . . ” 

“Do go faster, my dear fellow,” Ivan Ilyitch urged, 

[ 325 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


though the fine cob was tearing like the wind through 
the streets as it was, tugging viciously at the reins with 
his mouth. 

“Here we are, sir. The second door. Whoa Vasia!” 

In trepidation Ivan Ilyitch looked up at the six win¬ 
dows of a detached house, covered peacefully by lace 
curtains. He jumped out at the door. It was an old 
carved door, with a lion’s head for the handle. There 
was an ordinary bell, not an electric one. For some sec¬ 
onds, Ivan Ilyitch was unable to raise his hand to it. 
His heart beat violently. 

“Of course, I’m all in the dark. They mayn’t be at 
home, or perhaps they won’t see me,” he thought, as he 
pulled the brass handle. 

A bell rang within. “I’m sure no one is at home.” 
Immediately the quick footsteps of a woman were heard. 
Ivan Ilyitch looked about in perplexity. The black- 
bearded, cheery face of the smart driver winked at him. 
A chain clanged; the door opened and the pock-marked 
face of a maid appeared. 

“Does Daria Dmitrievna Bulavina live here?” Teliegin 
asked with a cough. 

“She is at home. Come in, sir,” the pock-marked girl 
said in a kindly sing-song. “The mistress and the young 
lady are both at home.” 

As in a dream Ivan Ilyitch entered the hall, where by 
a glass wall stood a striped ottoman, and there was a smell 
of coats. The maid opened another door to the right, 
which was covered with black oilcloth. In the small, 
dimly lighted passage hung a woman’s coat and in front 
of a looking-glass lay a pair of gloves, a kerchief with a 
red cross on it and a down shawl. A familiar, faint scent 
of amazing perfumes came from those innocent things. 

[ 326 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


Without asking the visitor’s name, the maid went in 
to announce him. With his fingers, Ivan Ilyitch touched 
the down shawl. Coming from that bloody mess he felt 
that he had no connection with this pure, refined life. 
“Some one to see you, miss,” he heard the maid’s voice 
from the depths of the house. Ivan Ilyitch shut his eyes. 
A divine thunder-clap would burst instantly. He trem¬ 
bled from head to foot as he heard a clear voice ask: 

“To see me? Who is it?” 

Steps were heard walking through the rooms. They 
seemed to come from the depths of two years of waiting. 
Coming from the light of the windows, Dasha appeared 
in the doorway. There was a golden light on her fair 
hair. She looked taller and thinner. She was dressed 
in a knitted blouse and a blue skirt. 

“Have you come to see me?” 

Dasha gasped. Her face twitched, her brows went up, 
her mouth opened. She threw her arms impetuously 
round Ivan Ilyitch’s neck and kissed him on the lips. 
Then she stepped back and touched her eyes with her 
fingers. 

“Come in here, Ivan Ilyitch.” Dasha led the way into 
the drawing-room and sank into a chair. She covered 
her face with her hands and bending to her knees, 
she wept. 

“How stupid of me. It will soon pass,” she said, wip¬ 
ing her eyes energetically. Ivan Ilyitch stood before her, 
his cap pressed against his chest. Dasha suddenly leaned 
her arms on the arms of the chair and raised her head. 

“Did you escape, Ivan Ilyitch?” j 

“Yes.” 

“Good heavens! Well ?” 

“Well . . . and here I am.” 


[ 327 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


He sat down in a chair opposite her, put his cap on a 
table and stared at his feet. 

“How did you manage it?” Dasha stammered. 

“It was very ordinary, on the whole.” 

“Was there danger?” 

“There was. That is, nothing unusual.” 

Both were gradually caught in a kind of spider’s web. 
Dasha, too, dropped her eyes. 

“How long have you been in Moscow?” 

“I have just come from the station.” 

“I will have some coffee made.” . . . 

“Please don’t trouble. I am just going to my hotel.” 

“Will you come in the evening?” Dasha asked in a 
scarcely audible voice. 

Ivan Ilyitch nodded with compressed lips. He wanted 
air. He rose to go. 

“Then I shall come back in the evening.” 

Dasha extended her hand. He took her soft, firm 
hand and the contact made him feel hot. The blood 
rushed to his face. He pressed her finger and turned to 
the hall, but stopped in the doorway. Dasha stood with 
her back to the light, looking askance at him, in a strange, 
unfriendly way. 

“May I come at seven, Daria Dmitrievna?” 

She nodded. Ivan Ilyitch rushed out of doors. 

“Drive to a good hotel,” he said to the driver; “the 
best in the place.” 

Leaning back in the seat of the trap, his hands drawn 
up in the sleeves of his coat, Ivan Ilyitch smiled broadly 
to himself. Blue shadows of people and trees and car¬ 
riages flew past his eyes. A cold wind, which smelt of 
a Russian town, beat against his face. Ivan Ilyitch took 
his nose in the palm of his hand, which still burned with 

[328 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


Dasha’s touch, and laughed aloud. “Sheer witchery!” 

Dasha was at that moment standing by the drawing¬ 
room window with a ringing sound in her head. She 
could not collect her thoughts, could not make out what 
had happened. She shut her eyes with a groan and ran 
into her sister’s room. 

Ekaterina Dmitrievna was sitting by the window sew¬ 
ing and thinking. On hearing Dasha enter she asked, 
without raising her head: 

“Who was your visitor, Dasha?” 

“He.” 

Katia looked up, her face twitched. 

“Who?” 

“He. . . . Can’t you understand? He. . . . Ivan 
Ilyitch.” . . . 

Katia let fall her work and clapped her hands slowly. 

“Only think, Katia; I am not even glad. I am only 
frightened,” Dasha said in a hushed voice. 


[ 329 ] 


XXX 


When it began to get dark Dasha trembled at every 
sound. She kept rushing into the drawing-room and 
listening. Now and again she tried to read a book, a 
supplement of “The Neva,” beginning always at the same 
page. “Marousia liked chocolates, which her husband 
would bring her from Krapt.” . . . She threw the book 
down and went to the window. Two windows in a house 
opposite were lighted up in the frosty twilight. It was 
the house where Charodeyeva, the actress, lived. A maid 
in a cap could be seen quietly laying the table. Charo¬ 
deyeva, as thin as a skeleton, came in with a velvet coat 
thrown round her shoulders. She sat down by the table 
and yawned, looking as if she had been asleep on the 
couch. She served herself some soup and suddenly grew 
lost in thought, staring at a little vase containing a with¬ 
ered rose. “Marousia liked chocolates ...” Dasha said 
under her breath. The bell rang. The blood rushed from 
Dasha’s heart. It was only the evening paper, however. 
“He is not coming,” Dasha thought, and went into the 
dining-room, where a single lamp burned over the white 
tablecloth and a clock ticked. Dasha sat down by the 
table. “So at every second life goes by. A time will 
come when there will be only a few seconds left. One, 
two, three.” . . . 

There was another ring at the front door. Dasha 
choked and ran into the hall. It was a porter from the 
hospital with a packet of papers. Dasha at last went into 
her own room and lay down on the couch. 

[ 330 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


“Ivan Ilyitch won’t come and he is perfectly right. I 
waited two years and when I got him I hadn’t a word to 
say. There was emptiness in place of love.” . . . 

Dasha pulled a pocket-handkerchief from beneath the 
cushion and applied it to her eyes. She knew that that 
was how it would all end. In the two years she had 
forgotten Ivan Ilyitch. She had loved some one of her 
own imagination and he had come back strange and new, 
with not a trace in his face to engage her former feelings. 

“Terrible, terrible!” Dasha thought. She would have 
to pretend to love him, just the same; no one would 
excuse her perfidy. 

Dasha sat up on the couch and dangled her legs. . . . 
“He must never know. And as for you, don’t you dare 
think of it. Love him. Even if you can’t, you must love 
him all the same.” 

She bit the corner of her handkerchief, thinking: “I 
must have no will of my own now; I am all his, thoughts 
and feelings and body. He can do as he likes with me.” 

Suddenly she grew calm. “I will submit and he must 
love me as I am.” Dasha sighed. She got up from the 
couch and went over to the looking-glass, where she 
tidied her hair and powdered her face to remove the 
traces of tears. She leant her elbow on the dressing- 
table and looked at herself in the glass. A pretty girl 
with fair hair, a sad, childish face with slightly swollen 
lips stared at her from the oval frame. The nose was 
small, the eyes large and clear. Too clear, somehow. 

As she looked, Dasha moved nearer to the glass. 
“Nothing might have happened to look at you. Every¬ 
thing might be serene and as it should be. A veritable 
angel. Arms, bare neck, charms hidden and exposed. . . . 
You couldn’t have done anything wrong.” . . . Dasha 

[ 331 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


smiled; the glass became covered with steam. “You are 
going through the supreme moment. Good-bye. You will 
be taken out into fresh water. Your eyes will be 
darker. ,, ... , 

Dasha listened. A hot stream seemed to flow through 
her body. She was both hot and calm. She did not no¬ 
tice the door open, nor the pock-marked Liza come in. 

“A visitor for you, miss.” 

Dasha gave a deep sigh. She rose as lightly as though 
her feet had not touched the floor and went into the 
dining-room. Katia was the first to see Dasha, whom she 
greeted with a smile. Ivan Ilyitch jumped up. He 
blinked as from a strong light and held himself erect. 
He was dressed in a new woollen shirt, with a new shoul¬ 
der-strap on one shoulder. His hair was cut and his 
face shaven. It was only now that one could see how tall 
and broad-shouldered he had become. Of course, he was 
another man. The gaze of his blue eyes was steady, the 
corners of his straight-cut mouth had two wrinkles, two 
tiny points. Dasha’s heart beat. She knew that it meant 
contact with death and horror and suffering. His hand 
was strong and cold as ice. 

“Sit down, Ivan Ilyitch,” she said, going up to the 
table. “Tell us about yourself.” 

She sat down on a chair beside him. Teliegin put his 
hands on the tablecloth and clenched them. He began 
to tell them about his captivity and flight. Dasha, who 
sat close to him, watched his face, open-mouthed. 

It seemed to Ivan Ilyitch that his voice came from 
afar. The words came of themselves. He was bewil¬ 
dered and agitated by the fact that beside him, her dress 
touching his knees, sat this indescribable girl, who was 
both dear and strange to him, quite incomprehensible, 

[ 332 ] 


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who smelt of forest glades and flowers and of something 
warm that made the head go round. 

The whole evening Ivan Ilyitch related his experiences. 

Dasha questioned and interrupted him, clapped her 
hands and appealed to her sister: 

“Only think, Katia, he was condemned to be shot! 
Just imagine it!” 

When Teliegin came to the fight for the car, the mo¬ 
ment that divided them from death, describing how the 
car moved at last and the wind beat against their faces 
and there was liberty and life, Dasha turned pale and 
seized his hand. 

“We are not going to let you go again!” 

Teliegin laughed. 

“There won’t be any help for it when I am called up 
again. My only hope is to be listed on a munition 
works.” 

He gently pressed her hand. Dasha looked into his 
eyes intently; her cheeks flushed a slight red; she let go 
his hand. 

“Won’t you smoke? I will bring you some matches.” 

She went out quickly and returned with a box of 
matches. She stood before Ivan Ilyitch, striking one 
match after another and all broke. What matches Liza 
bought, indeed! At last one struck and Dasha brought 
the flame to the end of Ivan Ilyitch’s cigarette. The light 
shone on the end of her delicate chin. Teliegin lighted 
his cigarette with his eyes shut. He did not know that 
so much pleasure could be experienced in the lighting of 
a cigarette. 

Katia watched the two of them. She felt immeasurably 
sad. She could hardly keep back the tears. Her mind 
was full of that never-to-be-forgotten dear youth, Rosh- 

[333 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


chin. He, too, used to sit with them at the table and she, 
too, used to bring him matches and strike a light. But 
she never broke a single one. 

Teliegin went away at midnight. Dasha embraced and 
kissed her sister and shut herself in her own room. As 
she lay on the bed with her arms thrown above her head, 
she reflected that at last she had broken through her spir¬ 
itual fog. Everything about her was desolate and empty 
and strange, but, at any rate, there was the blue sky, 
there was happiness. 


[ 334 1 


XXXI 


On the fifth day after his arrival, Ivan Ilyitch received 
a government intimation from Petrograd, commanding 
him to present himself at the Ibukhovsky works and 
put himself at the disposal of the chief engineer. 

The joy over this, the remainder of the day spent with 
Dasha busily in the town, the hasty farewell at the 
Nicholas Station, the second class well heated compart¬ 
ment, the packet he found in his pocket, tied with a rib¬ 
bon and containing two apples, chocolates and some cakes, 
were all like a dream. Ivan Ilyitch unfastened his woollen 
shirt, stretched out his legs, and unable to banish a stupid 
smile from his lips, he stared at his neighbour opposite, 
an old man in spectacles. 

“Are you from Moscow?” the old man asked. 

“Yes.” God! What a sweet word it was! Moscow! 
. . . The streets bathed in sunshine, the dry leaves be¬ 
neath the feet, Dasha, light and slender stepping over 
them, her clear, intelligent voice (he could not recall her 
words), the constant smell of apples when he bent over 
her or kissed her hand. 

“Sodom! A veritable Sodom!” the old man said. “I 
spent three days in the Kokorev Inn and I did see things, 
I tell you.” . . . He parted his feet, in boots and high 
galoshes, and spat on the floor. “If you go out in the 
street there are people, people, crowding everywhere. 
What for? They tear about the shops, drive about furi¬ 
ously, and are always in a hurry. What is the reason of it 
all ? And at night there is a twisting and whirling of illumi- 

[335 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


nated signs. What a noise and bustle! People crowding 
in thousands. . . . They are quite mad. It seems to me 
nothing but a devilish, shameless, stupid hurry-scurry. 
Now you are a young man; you’ve been wounded at the 
war; I can see that at a glance; I should like you to tell 
an old fellow like me, is it really for this damned hurly- 
burly that the men are shedding their blood at the front ? 
Where’s the country? Where religion? Where the 
Tsar? Tell me. Now I’m going to Petersburg to buy 
some sewing cotton, be damned to it. . . . That we 
should have come to this! It will not be sewing cotton 
that I shall bring back to Tumen. It’s a message that 
I’ll bring. I shall tell them we have all gone to the devil. 
. . . Mark my words, young man. We shall pay for this 
rushing past thirty times when a man has to go quietly 
once.” The old man leant on his knees, got up and pulled 
down the window blind to keep out the lines of flying 
sparks from the engine. “We have forgotten God and 
God has forgotten us. ... A reckoning will come, I tell 
you, a cruel reckoning.” . . . 

“Do you mean the Germans will beat us?” Ivan Ilyitch 
asked. 

“Who knows? Whomever the Lord sends to chastise 
us, from him shall we receive our punishment. . . . Now 
look here, supposing the young fellows in my shop begin 
to misbehave themselves, I may bear it for a time, but 
then I’ll give this one a knock on the head, another a 
blow in the neck, a third a punch in the jaw. Russia, 
however, is not a shop. God is merciful, but when peo¬ 
ple have defiled the way to Him, mustn’t that way be 
cleared? That is my meaning. It is not merely a ques¬ 
tion, young man, of abstaining from meat on Wednes¬ 
days and Fridays, it’s a question of something more seri- 

[ 336 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 

ous. God has gone from the world; there is nothing more 
terrible than that.” . . . 

The old man folded his hands over his stomach and 
closed his eyes. His spectacles sparkled severely as he 
bobbed up and down in his corner on the grey bunk. 
Ivan Ilyitch left the carriage and stood by the corridor 
window with his face almost touching the glass. The 
fresh, keen air blew in through a crack. Without, in the 
darkness, lines of fire flew and interlaced and dropped to 
the ground. A cloud of smoke was borne past now and 
again. The carriage wheels clanked loudly, the engine 
gave a prolonged shriek and turning, the fire from its 
furnace lighted up the dark fir cones, making them stand 
out and disappear in the darkness. A signal dropped; the 
carriages gave a slight jerk; a green lantern flashed out 
and once more sheets of fire rained past the windows. 

As he watched them Ivan Ilyitch, with a sudden, over¬ 
whelming joy, realized the force of what had happened in 
the past five days. Had he been able to tell some one 
what he felt, he would have been counted a madman. 
There was nothing strange or mad in it for him, how¬ 
ever; everything was unusually clear. 

In the darkness of the night, he felt, there moved and 
suffered and died millions upon millions of people. And 
all the millions imagined themselves to be living beings. 
But they lived only conditionally, and everything that 
took place on earth was merely conditional, fanciful al¬ 
most. It seemed to him fanciful to such a degree that 
were he to make a single effort, the whole world would 
be changed and assume a different aspect. And amidst 
the fantasy there beat a living heart. His own heart, 
belonging to the bent figure at the window. It had left 
the world of shadows and was flying over the dark world 

[ 337 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


in a rain of fire. His heart beat with divine joy and 
living blood—the sap of love flowed through it. 

This strange feeling of love for himself lasted for 
some seconds. He went back to his carriage, climbed 
on to the upper bunk and as he undressed he looked at his 
big hands, reflecting for the first time in his life that they 
were beautiful. He put them behind his head and shut 
his eyes and instantly he saw Dasha. She was gazing 
into his eyes in loving agitation. (It was the same day, 
in the dining-room. Dasha was turning over some cakes. 
Ivan Ilyitch walked round the table and kissed her warm 
shoulder. She turned quickly. “Dasha, will you be my 
wife?” he asked. She merely looked at him without re- 
plying.) 

Lying on the bunk he could see Dasha’s face now and 
was unable to feast enough on the vision. For the first 
time he felt a joyous exultation in the thought that Dasha 
loved him and that he had big and beautiful hands. His 
heart beat violently. 


When he arrived in Petersburg Ivan Ilyitch imme¬ 
diately presented himself at the Obukhovsky works and 
was listed on night duty in one of the workshops. 

A great many things had changed at the works in the 
last three years. There were three times as many work¬ 
ers, some of them quite young fellows; some had been 
brought from the Urals and some had been taken from 
the operating army. Not a trace remained of the former 
half-starved, half-drunken workman, who was bitter and 
timid. The men earned good wages, read newspapers, 
abused the war, the Tsar, the Tsarina, Rasputin and the 

[ 338 ] 



THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


generals. They were all enraged and believed in a revolu¬ 
tion after the war. 

They were particularly enraged that the bread in the 
town bakeries was mixed with chaff and that for days 
there would be no meat in the market, and that when 
there was any it would be bad. Potatoes, too, were rot¬ 
ten, sugar was dirty, and to add to everything food was 
very dear and shopkeepers were profiteering. As much 
as fifty roubles would be charged for a box of chocolates 
and a hundred for a bottle of champagne. And nothing 
would they hear of making peace with the Germans. 

Ivan Ilyitch was allowed three days to arrange his per¬ 
sonal affairs and spent the time rushing about the town 
to look for a flat. He had no clear notion as to why he 
wanted a flat, but when he had stood by the carriage win¬ 
dow he had thought it necessary to take a nice flat hav¬ 
ing white rooms and blue curtains and clean windows 
showing a view of the islands. 

He went over dozens of houses, but found nothing to 
please him. In one there was a wall opposite, in another 
the furniture was too rough or depressing. On the last 
day, however, he succeeded in finding the very thing he 
had pictured to himself in the railway carriage. It was a 
flat of five tiny white rooms with clean windows facing 
west. It was situated at the end of Kamen Island and 
was very inconvenient and expensive, but he took it im¬ 
mediately and wrote to inform Dasha about it. 

On the fourth night he went on duty at the works. In 
the yard, black with coal-dust, were tall lamp-posts with 
lighted lamps. The smoke from the brick chimneys was 
beaten by the damp wind to the ground; yellow, stifling 
fumes filled the air. Through the big, semi-circular, 
dirty windows of the workshops numberless whirling 

[ 339 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


transmission straps could be seen turning the iron cheeks 
of the lathes and boring mills, planing and turning steel 
and bronze. The vertical discs of stamping machines 
came down. Cranes flew high in the darkness. The fur¬ 
naces blazed with a red and white light. Vibrating the 
ground with its rapid strokes was a huge steam hammer. 
From the low smelting chimneys, columns of flame rose 
in the dark-grey sky. The figures of men moved leisurely 
through the deafening noise and the gleam of iron-bound 
demons. . . . 

Ivan Ilyitch entered the workshop where they stamped 
shrapnel shells. Strukov, an engineer and old acquaint¬ 
ance, conducted him through the shop, explaining certain 
characteristics of the work with which Teliegin was not 
acquainted. He afterwards took him into a little office, 
partitioned off from the shop, and showed him the books 
and reports. He then handed him the keys and putting 
on his overcoat, said: “Twenty-three per cent of the 
goods turned out are duds. Try and keep to the figured 

By the way he talked and the manner in which he had 
given over the workshop, Teliegin gathered how indiffer¬ 
ent Strukov was to the work, and Strukov, as he had 
known him of old, was an excellent engineer and a great 
enthusiast. He was troubled and asked: “Isn’t it possi¬ 
ble to reduce the percentage of duds?” 

Strukov yawned and shook his head. He pulled his 
cap low over his unkempt head and went back to the 
lathes with Ivan Ilyitch. 

“Drop that, my dear fellow. What is the difference? 
Twenty-three per cent less men will be mown down. Be¬ 
sides, you can’t alter anything. The lathes are completely 
worn out. Let them go to the devil!” 

He stopped by a press. A short-legged old workman 

[ 340 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


in a leather apron put a red-hot pig of ore under the 
stamp; the frame came down, the rod entered the soft 
red steel, a hot flame shot up, the frame rose and a 
three-inch shrapnel shell fell to the ground. The old man 
immediately brought up another pig of ore. Another 
man, a tall young fellow with a curled black moustache, 
was busy by the furnace. Strukov turned to the old man. 

‘‘Well, Rublev, are all the shells dud?” 

The old man smiled and with the slits of eyes gave a 
cunning, furtive look at Teliegin. 

“Of course, they’re dud. See how the thing works.” 
He put his hand on the post, green with grease, on which 
the frame of the press glided. “You can see the damned 
thing shake. It ought to have been chucked out long ago.” 

The young fellow at the furnace, Ivan Rublev’s son, 
Vaska, gave a short laugh. 

“A lot of things ought to be chucked out of here. The 
machine’s grown rusty.” 

“Easier, Vaska,” Strukov said cheerfully. 

“Easier! That’s just it!” Vaska shook his curly head 
and his broad, handsome face with the black moustache 
and fierce eyes smiled sarcastically in a self-assured kind 
of way. 

“The two best hands in the shop,” Strukov said softly 
to Ivan Ilyitch as they walked away. “Good-bye. I am 
going to ‘The Red Bells’ tonight. Ever been there? An 
excellent cabaret and they give you good drink. I must 
take you there some time.” 


Ivan Ilyitch began to study the Rublevs, both father 
and son. During that first conversation he was struck by 
the similarity of word and smile and glance that Strukov 

[ 341 ] 



THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


had exchanged with them. All three seemed to be trying 
to discover whether he, Teliegin, was “one of us” or an 
enemy. By the ease with which Rublev talked to him, 
he came to understand that he had been put down as 
“one of us.” 

The term had no relation to Ivan Ilyitch’s political 
views, which were exceedingly vague, nor to his past work 
in the place, but rather to a comfortable feeling of happi¬ 
ness, of which every one was conscious. The source of 
a great, attainable happiness was contained in Ivan Ilyitch 
and for this reason he was held to be “one of us” by 
every one who came in contact with him. 

When on duty one night Ivan Ilyitch went up to the 
Rublevs and listened to the father and son arguing. They 
made occasional appeals to him. 

Vaska Rublev was a socialist, well read and embittered. 
He talked only of class war, of the dictatorship of the 
proletariat, and expressed himself in a smart, bookish 
way. Ivan Rublev was an Old Believer, cunning, re¬ 
ligious, but on the whole, not a God-fearing man. 

“At our place, in the Perm forests,” he said, “in the 
books at the hermitages everything is set down, the pres¬ 
ent war and how we shall be ruined afterwards. The 
whole of our land will be ruined and the number of peo¬ 
ple who will be left, and those will be few. . . . And how a 
man as strong as a beast will come out of a hermitage 
and will rule the land according to the terrible word of 
God.” 

“A mystic,” Vaska said with a wink. 

“There’s a word for you, you rascal! Calls himself a 
socialist. What sort of a socialist are you, eh? You are 
a turner by trade; that is what you are, you dog. I was 
just like him. He must be tearing about with his cap 

[ 342 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


over his ear, his shirt torn, his eyes bulging out and be 
singing, ‘Arise to battle/ . . . Against whom? What 
for? You silly ass!” 

“Hear how this old man talks?” Vaska said, pointing 
with his thumb at his father. “He’s a dangerous anar¬ 
chist. He hasn’t a notion of what socialism is, yet always 
abuses me for the way I talk.” 

“No, my friends,” said Rublev, interrupting him as he 
seized a pig of ore and, executing a circle with it, placed 
it adroitly by the stamping rod, “you read books, but not 
the right books. Vaska has learned a single word by 
heart and that is, freedom. He must have freedom. . . . 
You try and take it. It is like trying to hold smoke in 
your hand! There is no humility left. They don’t un¬ 
derstand that they must be poor in spirit according to 
the times.” 

“What a muddle-head you are, Father!” Vaska said 
with annoyance. “Not long ago he declared himself a 
revolutionary.” 

“And so I did. What is that to you? If anything 
were to happen, my dear fellow, I’d be the first to seize 
a pitchfork. Why should I hold on to the Tsar? I am 
a peasant. How much land have I ploughed in the past 
thirty years? I can’t eat freedom with my porridge. I 
want land and not those damned nuts of yours to crack!” 
He kicked his boot against a heap of shrapnel shells on the 
floor. “Revolutionary! Of course, I’m a revolutionary! 
Don’t I prize my soul’s salvation?” 

Vaska spat in disgust. Ivan Ilvitch laughed. He got up 
and stretched himself. The night was drawing to a close. 


Teliegin wrote to Dasha every day, but she did not 
reply so often. Her letters were strange and icy and Ivan 

[ 343 ] 



THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


Ilyitch felt slightly chilled when he read them. He would 
sit down by the window with Dasha’s sheet of note- 
paper written in a sloping hand and read it again and 
again. Then he would gaze at the grey, purple woods 
on the islands and at the clouded sky, as muddy as the 
water in the canal. He leant his chin on the window-sill 
and stared out, reflecting that it was just as well perhaps 
that Dasha’s letters were not warm as he had foolishly 
hoped them to be and that Dasha wrote them honestly 
and sincerely. Her heart was true, calm and stern like 
the Great Festival before the forgiveness of sin. 

“My dear Friend,” she wrote, “why have you taken a 
flat of five rooms? Think of the expense you are incur¬ 
ring! It is bad enough if you live alone. Five rooms! 
And then the service—you must keep two women and 
in these days, too! One should be content to creep into 
a hole and sit there with bated breath. ... In Moscow 
the autumn is cold and rainy; there is no light. ... We 
must wait for the spring. ...” 

Just as on the day of his departure, when he had 
asked her to be his wife and she had answered merely 
by a glance, so now in her letter she never referred directly 
to their marriage nor to their future life together. He 
must wait until the spring. 

This waiting for the spring in vague and desperate 
hope of some miracle happening was common to every 
one. Life had stopped, people had burrowed into the 
winter to lick their paws. Outwardly it seemed that there 
was no more vitality to bear this new waiting for a 
bloody spring. On one occasion, Dasha wrote: 

“I had not meant to speak nor to write of Bezsonov’s 
death, but yesterday I again heard the details of his ter¬ 
rible end. Not long before he left for the front, I met 

[344 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


him in the Tversky Boulevard. He was pitiful then. 
Had I not repulsed him he would not have died perhaps. 
But I did repulse him; I could not do otherwise. I 
should do the same again if the past were repeated. His 
death lies at my door ; I accept that. You must under¬ 
stand it. You are right when you say that man cannot 
live for himself alone. . . 

Teliegin spent half the day answering the letter. “How 
can you imagine that I do not accept everything that 
concerns you?” . . . He wrote slowly, trying hard to 
keep all the letters straight. “I sometimes ask myself 
what I would do if you were to fall in love with another 
man; that is, if the worst thing of all were to happen. I 
should accept that, too ... I would not resign myself, 
oh, no; my heart would be dark within me. . . . But my 
love for you does not consist only in pleasure. You 
sometimes feel that you want to die because you love too 
deeply. That is how Bezsonov must have felt when he 
went to the front. . . . Let his name be sacred. . . . 
And you must feel that you are absolutely free, Dasha. 
... I ask nothing of you, not even love. ... I have 
come to realize this lately. ... I really want to be hum¬ 
ble in spirit. . . . Oh, God, what a hard time it is that 
we have to love in!” 

Two days later Ivan Ilyitch returned at daybreak from 
the works, had a bath and went to bed, but he was awak¬ 
ened by a telegram: 

“All is well. I love you horribly. Your Dasha.” 


One Sunday evening, Strukov, the engineer, called for 
Ivan Ilyitch and took him to “The Red Bells.” 


[ 345 ] 



THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


It was a cabaret in a basement and smelt of tobacco 
and alcohol and the sweat of human beings. The arched 
ceiling and the walls were decorated with brightly col¬ 
oured birds, naked women, unnatural in hue and form, 
infants with distorted faces and many significant scrolls. 

The place was filled with noise and smoke. On a plat¬ 
form sat a wrinkled, painted little man in an army shirt, 
his hands wandering about the keys of a pianoforte. The 
tables were packed. A group of officers sat drinking 
cocktails and staring uneasily at the women passing by. 
Advocates, interested in art, argued loudly. The queen 
of the place, a black-haired beauty with puffed eyes, was 
laughing at the top of her voice. At a corner of a table 
sat Antoshka Arnoldov, twirling a tuft of hair while 
writing his correspondence from the front. On a raised 
place, drunk and with hanging head, slumbered the pro¬ 
genitor of futurism, a veterinary surgeon with hollow, 
consumptive cheeks. Three young poets sitting in a cor¬ 
ner yelled out, “Sing something indecent, Kostia!” The 
painted old man at the piano, without turning round, tried 
to sing something in an unsteady voice, but no one heard 
him. The proprietor, an ex-actor, long-haired and har¬ 
rowed, appeared at a side door now and again, stared at 
his guests with wild eyes and disappeared. At dawn, 
three days back, his wife had run away from the place 
with a young composer straight to the Finnish railway 
station. He had not slept for three days and had been 
drinking heavily. 

Strukov, somewhat intoxicated with the cocktail he 
was having, said to Ivan Ilyitch: “No wonder I like this 
place. It would be hard to find a rottener hole any¬ 
where. ... It does you good to look at it. Look at 
that creature sitting by herself in the corner! She’s so 


[ 346 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 

thin she can hardly move. The last degree of hysteria. 
. . . Yet she has a great success among women. . . . 
And that man over there with the horselike jaw, that’s 
the famous poet, Semesvetov. He knocked out his front 
teeth to avoid going to the war and writes his verses. . . . 
‘The war will not end till Russian bayonets are wiped on 
the silk drawers of Vienna prostitutes.’ That’s a pub¬ 
lished one, and there are unpublished ones, too. ‘Chew 
with iron jaw, burst human flesh, bourgeois! Our prole¬ 
tarian bayonet will slit your fat belly.’ ” 

Strukov laughed loudly and emptied the cocktail down 
his throat. Without wiping his lips, shaded by a Tar¬ 
tar moustache, he kept on telling Ivan Ilyitch the names 
of the different guests. He pointed out a sleepy, un¬ 
healthy-looking man with a wild face. 

“There is the very core of the contagion, the very 
cancer”; he spoke the words with pleasure; “from that 
spot the decay spreads over Mother Russia. I know you 
are a patriot, Ivan Ilyitch, a nationalist, an intellectual. 
. . . How would it be to splash and spatter the blood 
on this putrefaction ? Ha, ha. . . . They’d chase over the 
earth and bite like mad things. . . . But you wait, the 
time will come when they will lick the blood; they will 
come to life again, these swine, these death-heads; they 
will be conscious of their power, they will believe in 
their right. . . . And they’ll turn everything upside 
down like mad things. . . . Our Mother Russia, the 
accursed, will burst and the decay will flow throughout 
the world. . . . Curse you!” 

Strukov was very drunk indeed. His dry eyes glis¬ 
tened merrily and his oaths were pronounced with a 
gentle smile. Teliegin frowned. His head went round 
from the medley and the noise of Strukov’s incompre¬ 
hensible outburst. 


[3471 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


At first several people and then every one in the room 
turned their gaze to the entrance door. The veterinary 
surgeon’s yellow eyes bulged; the wild face of the pro¬ 
prietor popped out of the wall; the half-dead woman 
sitting at the side raised her heavy eyelids and her eyes 
grew suddenly bright; with unexpected vivacity, she 
jumped from her chair and stared in the direction of 
the door. ... A glass fell. 

At the door stood an oldish man of middle height, with 
shoulders thrust slightly forward and hands in his 
pockets. His narrow face with the long beard was smil¬ 
ing cheerfully with the two deep habitual wrinkles, and 
standing out of the whole face were two intelligent, 
piercing eyes, which shone with a grey light. Thus a 
minute passed. From out the darkness of the doorway 
another face approached his; it was the face of a civil- 
servant, who with a crooked, anxious smile whispered 
something in his ear. The man unwillingly wrinkled 
his large nose and said: “There you go again with your 
foolishness! I’m sick of you!” And looking round at 
the guests, still more cheerfully, he shook his head 
and said in a big voice, “Well, good-bye, my jolly 
friends. ...” 

He went out and the door banged behind him. The 
whole room began to hum like a beehive. Strukov dug 
his nails into Ivan Ilyitch. “Did you see? Did you 
see ?” he asked, gasping. “That was Rasputin!” 


[ 348 ] 


i 


XXXII 


It was four o’clock in the morning and Ivan Ilyitch 
was walking home from the works. It was a frosty, 
December night. He could not find an izvozchik; they 
w T ere hard to find at that time even in the centre of the 
town. Teliegin walked briskly in the middle of the 
deserted street, breathing steam into his raised collar. 
In the light of the few lamps, falling frost needles could 
be seen in the air. The snow crunched loudly beneath 
the feet. Red reflections danced on the flat, yellow fa¬ 
cade of a house. Teliegin turned the corner and saw 
the flame of a fire in a pail, around which were chilled 
figures enveloped in steam. Higher up the pavement 
was a long, motionless line. About a hundred people— 
women, old men and boys—were standing in a queue at 
a provision shop. At the side was a night-porter stamp¬ 
ing his feet and banging his arms to keep warm. 

Ivan Ilyitch walked the length of the queue and 
looked at the huddled figures, wrapped in shawls and 
pressed against the wall. 

“Three shops were looted yesterday on the Viborsky, ,, 
a voice said. 

“What else can you do?” 

“I asked for half a pound of kerosene yesterday,” 
another voice said, “and they told me they hadn’t got 
any and there was the Dmitrievs’ cook buying five 
pounds before my eyes at a free price.” 

“What did she pay?” 

“Two and a half roubles a pound, my girl.” 

“For kerosene?” 


[ 349 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


“We’ll remember it against the shopkeeper when the 
time comes.” 

“At Okhta, my sister says, they caught a shopkeeper 
at a trick like that and shoved his head into a pickle- 
barrel. He begged to be let off, but he was drowned.” 

“Serves him right. They deserve worse.” 

“Meanwhile we’ve got to freeze.” 

“While he’s drinking his tea.” 

“Who’s drinking tea?” a hoarse voice asked. 

“They’re all swilling it. My mistress, a general’s wife, 
gets up at twelve o’clock and keeps on swilling tea till 
you think she’ll burst, the image.” 

“And you can stand here and freeze and get con¬ 
sumption.” 

“You’re right. I’ve got a cough already.” 

“My mistress is a cocotte. When I get back from 
market the place is full of men, all in their pants and 
drunk. Immediately they ^sk you for an omelette, 
or black bread or vodka, anything that’s coarse.” 

“It’s English money they drink on,” a voice said. 

“Now, really!” 

“Everything is sold, believe me. You stand here 
and don’t know anything, but you’ve been sold in 
bondage for fifty years to come. The army, too, is 
sold. This is what we’ve come to, my God!” 

“What is the use of invoking God? You must demand 
to be told why you are freezing here while they are in the 
feather-beds. Are there more of you or of them? Go, 
pull them out of their feather-beds, lie down in their 
places and let them come and stand in the queue!” 

When these words had been spoken by the same mas¬ 
culine, assured voice, a silence ensued. 

“Porter! I say, porter!” some one called with chat¬ 
tering teeth. 

[ 350 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


“What’s happened?” 

“Will there be salt today?” 

“Probably not.” 

“Then why am I standing here catching my death of 
cold ?” 

“Be damned to them!” 

“This is the fifth day that we’ve had no salt!” 

“They drink the blood of the people, the swine!” 

“Stop it now, you women. You’ll catch a cold in 
the throat if you talk so much,” the porter said in- a 
thick voice. 

Teliegin had gone past the queue. The angry voices 
were still. 

Again the straight streets were empty, lost in the 
leaden, frosty mist. 

Ivan Ilyitch reached the embankment and walked on 
the bridge. The wind blew the tails of his coat aside. 
He recollected that he had to find an izvozchik, but 
soon forgot it again. Far on the other bank, a line 
of shadowy lights twinkled. A line of dim lights on 
the footpath stretched across the ice. A cold wind 
blew over the waste of the Neva; the snow crunched, 
the tramway cables and the cast-iron railings of the 
bridge vibrated plaintively. 

Ivan Ilyitch stopped and looked at the gloomy dark¬ 
ness, thinking, as he often thought now, of one and the 
same thing, of the moment when, in the railway-car¬ 
riage, happiness and the consciousness of himself had 
come to him like a fire from within. 

His sensation of happiness was like a light in the dark¬ 
ness. Around him all was troubled and confused and 
hostile to his happiness. An effort had to be made every 
time he said to himself, “I live, I am happy, my life 
will be bright and beautiful.” 


[ 851 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


At the window that night, amidst the sparks of the 
flying train, it had been easy to say that, but it needed 
an effort now to detach himself from the half starved fig¬ 
ures in the queue, from the howling despair of the Decem¬ 
ber wind, from the touch of the ruin that threatened. 

Ivan Ilyitch was convinced that his love for Dasha, 
her charm, the glad consciousness of himself he had ex¬ 
perienced at the carriage-window, was the highest good. 
There was nothing greater than that in life. However, 
to detach one of the good things in life from life as a 
whole was treachery. He could not say to himself: 
“Let other people be murdered, let them perish of cold 
and hunger, but Dasha and I will be happy. Let only 
the two of us remain on earth and we shall still be 
happy.” Such were corrupt and evil thoughts. 

In an early letter, Ivan Ilyitch had written to Dasha: 
“What a hard time it is we have to love in.” It was 
hard because the old, comfortable, rather narrow, but 
amazing temple of life was shaken; it crumbled at the 
blows dealt by the war; its columns swayed; its wide 
dome was broken, the old stones were scattered and 
amidst the dust of the ruins, two beings, Ivan Ilyitch 
and Dasha, in the madness of their love, desired to be 
happy despite everything. 

He looked at the gloomy darkness of the night, at the 
twinkling lights; he heard the wind howl desperately 
and thought: “It is not wrong; the desire for happiness 
is higher than everything. I am made in the image and 
likeness of God. I don’t want the image to be destroyed, 
I want it transformed, and that is happiness. I want 
happiness in spite of everything. Can I abolish queues, 
feed the hungry, stop the war? I cannot. And as I 
cannot, must I renounce happiness and merge in the 
misery? No. But can I, shall I be happy? ...” 

[352 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


Ivan Ilyitch crossed the bridge and without noticing 
the way, he reached the Palace Embankment. Tall elec¬ 
tric lamps, shaken by the wind, burned brightly. Snow- 
dust flew with a rustling sound over the bare paving- 
blocks. The windows of the Winter Palace were dark 
and desolate. At a striped sentry-box near a snow-heap 
stood a giant guard in a big coat. His rifle was pressed 
against his chest by folded arms. 

Ivan Ilyitch pulled himself up suddenly. 

“The fact that I think about it means that there can’t 
be any happiness for me. We want to live by love and 
the whole world lives by hate. ...” 

He walked faster, battling with the wind at first, 
then turning his back on it. He went round the palace 
and walked in the square. Had the square been full 
of people, it seemed to him that he would have got up 
on the plinth of the Alexander column and told them 
all the plain truth and every one would have believed 
him. 

“You cannot live like this any longer,” he would 
have said; “the state is built on hatred, frontiers are de¬ 
termined in hatred, every one of us is a small fortress 
with aiming guns. Life is limited and terrible. All the 
world is stifling in hate; people are exterminating each 
other, rivers of blood flow. Is it not enough for you? 
Are you still blind? Must you have man kill man in 
every house? Come to yourselves, throw down your 
arms, break the boundaries, open the doors and windows 
to the free wind. Let the way of the cross pass through¬ 
out the earth and strengthen it with the water of life 
in the name of the Holy Ghost. That is the way we 
can live. We have land enough for corn, meadows for 
cattle, hilly slopes for vineyards; the inexhaustible womb 
of the earth is ours. There is room enough for all. 

[353 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


Don’t you realize that you are still living in the igno¬ 
rance of the Middle Ages? ...” 

Ivan Ilyitch came out on the Moika, caught his breath 
and laughed aloud. What a walk indeed! He looked 
at his watch. It was five o’clock. Crunching over the 
snow, a big car with extinguished lamps came round a 
corner. At the steering-wheel sat an officer in an open 
cloak. His narrow, clean-shaven face was pale and his 
eyes were glassy like the eyes of a drunken man. Be¬ 
hind him sat another officer with his cap pushed to the 
back of his head. His face was invisible. In both 
hands he held a mat bundle. The third man in the car 
was a civilian in a tall caracal cap with the collar of 
his coat raised. He stood up and shook the shoulders of 
the man at the steering-wheel. The car drew up by the 
bridge. Ivan Ilyitch saw the three of them jump out 
on the snow, they pulled out the bundle and dragged it a 
few paces along the snow, then with difficulty they lifted 
it and carried it to the middle of the bridge and dropped 
it over the railing. The two officers immediately went 
back to the car, the civilian bent over and looked after it 
for some time, then he put up the collar of his coat and 
ran after the others. The car set off at full speed and 
disappeared. 

“What a dirty thing to do!” Ivan Ilyitch said; he 
had watched the proceedings with bated breath. He 
went on to the bridge, but stare as hard as he would at 
the big black hole in the ice, he could not see anything; 
there was only a gurgling of stinking, warm water from 
a sewer. 

The lamps burned brightly on the deserted Moika em¬ 
bankment; desolation was reflected in the darkened win¬ 
dows ; the misty sky was just the same, leaden and frosty. 
“What a dirty thing to do!” Ivan Ilyitch muttered again, 

[ 354 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


scowling as he walked along the railings of the canal. 
On the Nevsky he at last found an izvozchik, a starved 
old man with a heavy-jawed horse. Ivan Ilyitch closed 
his eyes as he fastened the apron. His whole body ached 
with weariness. 

“I love, that is vital, real,” he thought. “It doesn’t 
matter what I do, if it comes from my love, it must be 
good.” 


[355 ] 


XXXIII 


\ 

The bundle which had been dropped by the three men 
into the hole of the ice was the body of Rasputin. In 
order to kill this superhuman, strong peasant he was first 
made drunk with wine, mixed with potassium cyanide; 
then he was shot in the breast and in the head and back 
of the neck and his head was at last smashed open with 
a castette. Yet for all that, when his body was dis¬ 
covered twenty-four hours later, a medical examination 
established that Rasputin had only ceased to breathe 
when under the ice in the Moika. 

The murder became a license for all that happened 
two months later—the license of blood. Rasputin had 
on more than one occasion declared that with his death 
the throne would crumble and the Romanov dynasty 
would collapse. This savage and violent man must have 
had a presentiment of evil, such as dogs feel before a 
death in the house, and he died unwillingly, this last sup¬ 
porter of the throne, peasant, horse-thief and wandering 
fanatic. 

His death brought a sinister depression on the court 
and rejoicing throughout the land; people congratulated 
each other over it. Nikolai Ivanovitch wrote to his 
wife from Minsk, “The night the news arrived, the of¬ 
ficers of the Commander-in-Chief’s staff ordered seven 
dozen bottles of champagne for the mess and the sol¬ 
diers yelled ‘Hurrah’ throughout the whole front.” 

After a few days the murder was forgotten by the 
country, but not by the court. At the court they believed 
in his prophecy and with gloomy forebodings made 

[356 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


ready for the revolution. Petersburg was secretly di¬ 
vided into sectors. Machine-guns were demanded from 
the Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovitch and when he re¬ 
fused them, they were ordered from Archangel and four 
hundred and twenty-two of them were placed in attics 
on the street-crossings. The press was still more re¬ 
stricted ; newspapers appeared with half their columns 
bare, but proprietors, not to be outdone, printed significant 
headlines on the bare columns which had a greater effect 
on the angry readers than the screaming articles. 

The Empress wrote her husband desperate letters to 
stimulate his will and spirit. Once more she demanded 
the complete abolition of the Imperial Duma. The Em¬ 
peror, like one bewitched, stayed at Mogilov among his 
faithful (there was no doubt of this) tens of millions of 
bayonets. Women rioters and howling Petersburg queues 
were more terrible to face than an army of three empires, 
pressing on the Russian front. In Mogilov, at the same 
time, unknown to the Emperor, the Head of Staff of the 
Supreme Commander-in-Chief, General Alexeiev, a 
clever man and ardent patriot, was preparing a plan to 
arrest the Empress and destroy the German party. 

In January, to anticipate a spring offensive, an order 
was signed for an attack on the Northern Front. At the 
opening of artillery fire, a snowstorm began. The men 
advanced through deep snow amid a howling storm and 
the hurricane of bursting shells. Dozens of aeroplanes 
that had gone up to help the advancing units were beaten 
down by the wind and in the darkness were mown down 
by our own as well as the enemy machine-gun fire. For 
the last time Russia was making an attempt to break 
the iron ring that hemmed her in, for the last time Rus¬ 
sian peasants in white shrouds, driven by a polar storm, 
were fighting for an Empire embracing one-sixth part 

[3571 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


of the world, for the autocracy, dangerous at one time to 
the world, but now become a lost conception, unfriendly 
and incomprehensible. 

The battle raged for ten days; thousands of the liv¬ 
ing were buried under the snow. The offensive stopped 
and froze. The front had once again congealed in the 
snow. 


[358 ] 


XXXIV 


Ivan Ilyitch had counted on the holidays to pay a visit 
to Moscow but the works commissioned him to go to 
Sweden, from whence he returned only in February. 
He immediately set about arranging a three weeks’ leave 
and telegraphed to Dasha to say that he was coming on 
the 26 th. 

For a week before his departure he was on duty at the 
workshops. Ivan Ilyitch was struck by the change that 
had come over the place in his absence. The manage¬ 
ment was polite and solicitous as it had never been be¬ 
fore and the workers showed their teeth. The men were 
so savage that at any moment it seemed some one would 
shout: 

“Stop work ! Smash the lathes !” 

The men were particularly incensed by the proceedings 
in the Imperial Duma, where a debate was in progress 
on the food question. The proceedings showed that the 
government could hardly preserve its dignity; it parried 
the attack with its last efforts. The Tsar’s ministers 
no longer talked like fairy heroes, but in human speech, 
which was a little whining. The men knew that the 
speeches of ministers were not true and that the truth 
was on every one’s lips. There were dark and sinister 
rumours of a near collapse of the front and rear from 
starvation. 

On his last duty Ivan Ilyitch observed a peculiar ex¬ 
citement among the men. They would leave their lathes 
every moment and confer together. When he asked 
Vasili Rublev what these conferences were about, Vaska 

,[ 359 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


angrily put on his wadding coat and left the shop, bang¬ 
ing the door behind him. 

“He’s got vicious, the rascal Vasili,” Ivan Rublev said. 
“He’s managed to get a revolver from somewhere and 
keeps it in his pocket.” 

Vasili soon returned and the men left their lathes and 
surrounded him. “ ‘Statement of Lieut.-General Kha- 
balov, Commander of the troops of the Petersburg Mili¬ 
tary District,’ ” Vaska read aloud with emphasis, holding 
a white bill in his hand. “ ‘During the last few days the 
amount of flour allowed to the bakeries and the quantity 
of bread baked have been the same as formerly.’ ” 

“That’s a lie!” voices were instantly raised. “There’s 
been no bread at all for three days.” 

“ ‘There ought not to be a shortage of bread,’ ” Vaska 
read on. 

“He’s proposed and disposed,” voices laughed sar¬ 
castically. 

“ ‘If there has not been enough bread in some shops 
that is because people fearing a shortage, have hoarded 
bread to make rusks. . . . ’ ” 

“Who’s made rusks ? Let him show us the rusks!” 
voices yelled. “We ought to jam a rusk down that lieu¬ 
tenant-general’s throat!” 

“Silence, comrades!” Vaska commanded. “Let 
Khabalov be made to show us those rusks. We must 
go out into the street, comrades. . . . From the Baltic 
Works four thousand men are marching on the Nevsky. 
And the women are coming out from the Viborg Works. 
They’ve fed us on statements long enough!” 

“He’s right. Let them show us bread! We want bread!” 

“They won’t show you any bread, comrades. There 
isn’t enough flour in the town to last for more than 
three days. Trains are standing still in the Urals. . . , 

[ 360 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 

Elevators there are filled with corn! In Cheliabinsk 
three million poods of meat are rotting at the station! 
In Siberia they are making candles of butter. . . . And 

the Tsar’s government expects the workers to eat 
dogs. ...” 

There stepped out from the crowd surrounding Rub¬ 
lev a fellow with crooked shoulders, whose grimy face 
twitched. He scowled and beat his breast and shook 
his head. 

“Why are you saying that to me? Why are you say¬ 
ing that to me?” 

“Arise! Throw down your work! Put out the fur¬ 
naces !” came shouts from all sides and the men rushed 
about the shop. 

Vaska Rublev went up to Ivan Ilyitch. His long 
eyelashes covered his eyes, his lips trembled. 

“Go!” he said audibly. “Go, while you are yet 
whole!” 


Ivan Ilyitch slept badly for the remainder of that 
night and awoke with a feeling of restlessness in every 
part of his body. The morning was cloudy; drops fell 
on the gutter without. Ivan Ilyitch tried to collect his 
thoughts. His restlessness would not leave him and the 
drops fell irritatingly, into his very brain, as it were. 

“I ought not to wait till the 26 th, I ought to go to¬ 
day,” he thought. He took off his nightshirt and went 
into the bathroom where he turned on the douche and 
stood under the icy, cutting spray. 

There was a great deal to be done before his departure. 
Ivan Ilyitch had some coffee and went out. He jumped 
into a tram-car, which was full of people, and here, too, 
he felt restless. The passengers sat in their usual gloomy 

[361 ] 



THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


silence, their knees pressed close together and angrily 
pulling the skirts of their clothing from beneath a neigh¬ 
bour. It was sticky underfoot; the raindrops rolled 
down the windows and the bell jingled irritatingly on 
the front platform. 

Opposite Ivan Ilyitch sat a war civil-servant with a 
patchy, yellowish face; his clean-shaven mouth was set 
in a crooked smile and his tin-coloured eyes, with an 
animation clearly unusual to them, looked round wonder- 
ingly. When he observed them, Ivan Ilyitch noticed 
that all the passengers were looking round in dismay 
and wonder. 

The car stopped at the comer of Bolshoi Prospect. 
The passengers immediately began to fidget and to look 
about them; a few jumped off the platform. The driver 
took the key and put it in the breast of his blue coat and 
opening the door in front, he said in anger and alarm: 

“The car is not going any further.” 

Over the whole of the Kamennoostrovsky and the 
Bolshoi Prospect, as far as the eye could see, tram-cars 
stood. The pavements were black with people. Rowdy 
boys, products of the war, tore about wildly. The iron 
shutters of a shop now and again came down with a 
bang. A thin, wet snow fell. 

A man appeared on top of one of the cars. His long 
coat was unfastened; he pulled his cap off his head and 
was shouting something below. “O-o-o-o!” a sigh went 
through the crowd. The man tied a rope to the roof of 
the car, then he stood up and again tore off his cap. 
“O-o-o-o” went through the crowd. The man jumped 
on the road. The crowd rolled back and then a group 
of people could be seen slipping over the snow as they 
tugged at a rope tied to the car. The car leant over; 
the crowd moved back; boys whistled. The car rocked, 

[362 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


but remained standing; the wheels crashed. The group 
tugging at the rope were joined by other people who 
came running silently from all sides. The car swayed 
and crashed over; there was a sound of broken glass. 
The silent crowd surged to the overturned car. 

“There are going to be some doings now!” a voice 
remarked behind Ivan Ilyitch cheerfully, and then sev¬ 
eral voices sarcastically took up the refrain, “Ygu fell 
a victim in the fatal war. ...” 

On the way to the Nevsky Ivan Ilyitch noticed the same 
wondering glances, the same anxious faces. All over the 
place, like small whirlpools, eager listeners seethed round 
news-bearers. Fat porters stood in doorways, house¬ 
maids stuck their noses out and peeped up the street, 
where a crowd surged at the top. Some man with a 
portfolio, a well-kept beard and an unfastened coat— 
an advocate evidently—asked a porter: “Tell me, good 
fellow, what is that crowd? What is happening there?” 

“They are asking for bread. It’s a riot, sir.” 

“Ah!” 

Higher up the street, at the crossing, stood a pale, 
tear-stained lady with a sick dog in her arms, whose 
hanging back trembled. The lady kept asking every 
one who passed, “What is the crowd for? What do 
they want?” 

“It looks like revolution, madam,” the man in the 
fur coat answered tearfully as he passed. 

Walking along the pavement with the skirt of his 
short coat flapping smartly was a workman with an un¬ 
wholesome lynx-like face which twitched. “Comrades,” 
he whined, turning suddenly, “how much longer will 
they drink our blood?” 

A fat-cheeked boy officer stopped an izvozchik and, 

[363 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


clutching his girdle, stared at the crowd as at an eclipse 
of the sun. 

“Look! look!” sobbed a passing workman. 


The crowd had grown denser and now filled the whole 
street; it hummed excitedly and moved in the direction 
of the bridge. In three places white flags had been put 
out. Like shavings passers-by were gathered up and 
taken along with the stream. Ivan Ilyitch followed the 
crowd across the bridge. Several horsemen were com¬ 
ing across the misty, snow-covered Marsov Square, but 
on seeing the crowd, they pulled up their horses and drew 
near slowly. One of them, a ruddy-complexioned colonel 
with a divided beard, saluted with a smile. Some people 
in the crowd began to sing mournfully. From the mist 
of the Summer Garden, from the dark bare branches 
of the trees, like pieces of stuff there rose up the crows 
that had at one time frightened the murderer of the 
Emperor Paul. 

Ivan Ilyitch was walking in front. He felt a spasm 
in his throat. He coughed, but his agitation merely in¬ 
creased and the tears were ready to come to his eyes. 
When he reached the Engineers’ castle, he turned down 
the left to the Liteini Prospect. 


On the Petersburg side of the Liteini Prospect there 
was another crowd which stretched far across the bridge. 
All along its way at the gates stood curious onlookers 
and at every window excited faces were seen. 

Ivan Ilyitch stopped at the gate beside an old civil- 

[ 364 ] 




THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


servant, whose hanging cheeks shook. Further on to the 
right, a chain of soldiers stood motionless across the 
street, leaning on their rifles. 

The crowd drew near and slackened speed. From the 
midst of it, frightened voices cried, “Stop! stop!” Im¬ 
mediately thousands of women’s shrill voices yelled, 
“Bread! bread! bread !” 

“This can’t be allowed!” said the civil-servant with 
a severe look at Ivan Ilyitch over the tops of his spec¬ 
tacles. Just then two yard-porters issued from the gate 
and began to push the onlookers away with their shoul¬ 
ders. The civil-servant’s cheeks trembled, some girl in 
pince-nez exclaimed, “How dare you, you fool!” The 
gate was nevertheless closed. All the way down the street 
gates and doors were being shut and frightened voices 
cried, “Don’t! don’t!” 

The screaming crowd moved onwards. A youth with 
a womanish, pimply face in a broad-brimmed hat, sprang 
out in front. 

“The banners in front! The banners in front!” 
voices shouted. 

At this moment, in front of the chain of soldiers, 
there appeared a tall, small-waisted officer in a fur cap. 
He held his hand on his hip by his pistol-case and 
cried aloud: “There is an order to fire. ... I don’t , 
want bloodshed. . . . Disperse. ...” 

“Bread ! bread ! bread!” voices cried. And the crowd 
moved on the soldiers. People with maddened eyes 
squeezed past Ivan Ilyitch. 

“Bread! Down with the dogs!” One man fell and 
caught Ivan Ilyitch by the leg. His wrinkled face con¬ 
torted pitifully and he cried senselessly, “I hate! I hate!” 

Slowly, throughout the street came a sound like the 
tearing of calico. The crowd was stilled. Some school- 

[365 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


boy seized his cap and dived into the crowd. . . . The 
civil-servant raised his sinewy hand to make the sign 
of the cross. 


The volley had been fired in the air and it was not 
followed by a second. The crowd, however, retreated. 
A part of it dispersed and the remainder moved with 
the flag to the Znamensky Square. Some caps and 
galoshes were left in the yellowish snow in: the street. 
When he came out on the Nevsky Ivan Ilyitch again 
heard the roar of numerous voices. It came from 
a second crowd which was crossing the Neva from 
the Vasilov Island. The pavements were packed with 
well-dressed women, officers, students and foreigners. 
An English officer, with a ruddy childlike face, stood 
like a post with the usual stony expression on his 
face. Shopgirls with powdered faces and black rib¬ 
bons in their hair were glued to the shop-windows. 
A tattered, dirty and angry crowd of working men 
and women walked in the middle of the broad, misty 
street, yelling, “Bread! bread! bread!” 

By the pavement, an izvozchik, leaning over the front 
of his sleigh, was saying amiably to a scared, red-faced 
woman, “You can see for yourself that I can’t go on. A 
fly couldn’t get by.” 

“Go on, you fool, and don’t dare talk to me!” 

“I’m not to be called a fool now. . . . Get out of 
the sleigh. ...” 

On the pavement, passers-by poked their heads into 
the groups standing about and listened and talked ex¬ 
citedly. 

“A hundred people have been killed on the Liteini. . . 

[366 ] 



THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


“It’s not true. They’ve only killed a pregnant woman 
and an old man.” 

“Why did they kill an old man?” 

"It’s Protopopov who does everything. He’s mad.” 

“You’re right. . . . Progressive paralysis.” 

“I’ve heard some impossible news. ...” 

“What is it? What is it?” 

“There’s a general strike.” 

“What? Water and electric light?” 

“I wish to God it were true. ...” 

“They’re splendid fellows, the workers!” 

“Don’t rejoice too soon. It may be crushed. ...” 

“Mind you are not crushed with that expression on 
your face. ...” 

Ivan Uyitch, annoyed at the loss of time, pushed his 
way through the crowds, called at three addresses on 
business without finding one o>f the people he wanted 
at home, and in an angry state of mind, walked back 
along the Nevsky. 

The street had assumed its former aspect. Sleighs 
flew past, yard-porters came out to clear away the 
snow and at the crossing, a tall man appeared in a 
long, black coat. Above the heads of the excited crowd 
and the muddled thoughts of the inhabitants, he raised 
his white club aloft, that magic sceptre of order. As 
they crossed the street, the passers-by thought, “All 
right, my dear fellow, you wait till the time comes!” 

But no one dreamed that the time had already come, 
and the pillar of a man with the big moustache and 
the club was no more than a shadow which would dis¬ 
appear tomorrow from the street-cro'ssing, disappear from 
life, from the minds of men. . . . 

“Teliegin, Teliegin! Stop, you deaf grouse!” 

Ivan Ilyitch turned round. Strukov, the engineer, with 

[ 367 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


his cap at the back of his head and eyes sparkling, was 
running towards him. 

“Where are you off to? Angry? Let us go to a cafe.” 

He took Ivan Ilyitch by the arm and dragged him up 
the first floor of a cafe. The room was filled with cigar 
smoke, which made the eyes smart. Men in top hats, in 
fur caps, in hastily thrown on coats were arguing, shout¬ 
ing and jumping up from their chairs. Strukov pushed 
his way to the window and sat down opposite Ivan Ilyitch, 
laughing. 

“The ruble is falling!” he exclaimed, clutching the 
table with both hands. “Paper money is going to the 
devil! Now we know where the power lies! Tell 
me what you’ve seen!” 

“I was on the Liteini; they fired there, but I think 
in the air. ...” 

“What do you think of it all?” 

“I think today’s events will make the government tackle 
the transport of provisions seriously.” 

“It’s too late now!” Strukov bawled, banging the 
palm of his hand on the glass table-top. “Too late! 
. . . We’ve eaten our own bowels! There’s an end 
to the war; it’s finished! There’s an end to everything! 
Everything will go to the devil. . . . Do you know 
what they are demanding in the factories? They in¬ 
sist on the formation of soviets of workers’ deputies. 
They’ve no faith in anything but soviets! And they de¬ 
mand immediate demobilization. ...” 

“You must be drunk,” Ivan Ilyitch said. “When I 
was at the works at night, I heard nothing at all. . . . If 
any demands are made, it must be you alone who are 
making them. ...” 

Strukov threw back his head and laughed. He kept 
his eyes fixed on Teliegin. 

[368 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


“It would be well to smash the machine. The very 
time, eh?” 

“I don’t think so. ... I don’t see anything good in 
it ” 

“No government, no troops, no policemen, none of 
these swine in top hats. ... To reduce to primeval 
chaos.” Strukov suddenly clenched his tobacco-stained 
teeth and the pupils of his eyes became like points. 

“To let loose horror, more horrible than the war. . . . 
Everything is damned and defiled and hideous. What if 
we destroy it all, like Sodom and Gomorrah . . . and 
leave a clean place?” Beneath the sweat on his forehead 
a vein stood out. “That is what everybody wants and 
you want it too. Only I say it and you dare not.” 

“You’ve been in the rear throughout the war,” Telie- 
gin said angrily, looking at Strukov with disgust, “but 
I was at the front and know that in 1914 we also wanted 
to fight and to destroy. Now we don’t want it. We de¬ 
stroyed, but we fought. Whereas you who have stayed 
behind in the rear are only now getting a taste for war. 
You’ve got the souls of marauders and hooligans; your 
idea is to plunder, burn! I’ve studied you for some 
time. You want to destroy, but when you yourself have 
to touch blood, you find it horrible. ...” 

“You’re a small man, Teliegin; you’ve got a lower 
middle-class mind.” 

“Perhaps, perhaps. ...” 


Ivan Ilyitch returned home early and immediately 
went to bed. He went to sleep for a moment only, 
however, then he sighed, turned over on his back and 
opened his eyes, wide awake. On the ceiling of his 

[369 ] 



THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


bedroom the light of a street-lamp was reflected. There 
was a smell of leather; an open trunk stood on the 
table. In the trunk, which he had bought in Stockholm, 
was a beautiful leather and silver dressing-case, a present 
for Dasha. Ivan Uyitch experienced a tender feeling for 
it and every day he took it out of its silky paper wrap¬ 
pings and looked at it. He could see a picture of 
Dasha in a railway carriage with long windows, as in 
all Russian trains, sitting on the seat in a travelling 
dress and on her lap, this thing, smelling of leather and 
perfumes, this token of carefree happiness, of wonder¬ 
ful journeys with unfamiliar landscapes without and 
Dasha’s pensive face within. If he could but lift the 
end of her veil, tied in a knot at the nape of her neck, 
and press it to his lips. . . . 

“Oh, dear! Something irreparable has happened to¬ 
day!” Ivan Ilyitch thought, and his memory, recalling 
everything he had seen, replied confidently: “In the town 
there is a sinister non-resistance to anything that may 
happen. A riot? Let there be a riot. Shooting? Let 
them shoot. A tram-car broken? All right. Workers 
crowd into the Nevsky? All right. Workers are dis¬ 
persed by firing? All right. Anything is better than the 
stifling stench of a hopeless war.” 

Ivan Ilyitch leant on his elbows and looked out of the 
window at the misty sky, where, in a dull, purple glow, 
the light of the town was reflected. He could feel with 
what hate and anguish must those who had cried for 
bread today regard the town. And those who had heard 
the cry were perhaps looking at it as he was in sad in¬ 
difference. Unloved and hated town, friendly to no 
one. . . . 


At half-past eight Ivan Ilyitch was awakened by a 

[ 370 ] 



THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


knock at the door. It was the porter’s wife, who had 
brought his newspaper. Ivan Ilyitch glanced through the 
whole of the six pages. It was reported that on the 23rd 
February in the Mitavsk district, in the Olae region, 
there had been some cross-firing and the enemy had at¬ 
tempted an attack with a strength of two companies, 
but were driven back to their trenches by our fire. There 
had been an explosion at Rostov-on-Don. A boiler had 
burst at the baths and a hundred and sixty people had 
run out naked into the street in the frost. The English 
parliament had passed a resolution demanding the im¬ 
mediate introduction of Home Rule. Two sugar manu¬ 
facturers, profiteers, had been released from the Kiev 
prison at the request of the high authorities. Then 
came a report of a debate on the food question in the 
Imperial Duma, but not a word was mentioned of the 
events of yesterday. Not a single soul nor a pen was 
stirred by the presentiment that the date, February 24th, 
was the last day of the old regime. 


Ivan Ilyitch left the house at twelve o’clock. The 
wide, misty street was deserted. Snow fell. Behind the 
steaming windows of a florist’s shop, in a crystal vase, 
was a gorgeous bunch of red roses with large drops of 
water on them. Ivan Ilyitch looked at it lovingly from 
out the falling snow. “Oh, God! Oh, God!” 

A Cossack horse patrol of five men came out of a side 
street. The last of them turned his horse and trotted 
up to the pavement, where three men in caps and tattered 
coats tied with girdles were walking quietly in animated 
talk. The men stopped and one of them, making some 
amiable remark, took hold of the horse’s bridle. The 

[ 371 ] 



THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


gesture was so unusual that Ivan Ilyitch’s heart jumped. 
The Cossack laughed and, throwing back his head, let 
go his impatient horse and caught up with his fellows. 
They trotted away 1 and disappeared in the mist of the 
street. 

When he reached the quay Ivan Ilyitch saw groups of 
excited people. No one had been able to settle down after 
the events of yesterday. They conferred, exchanged 
rumours and news and many went on to the Nevsky. 
There, all along the stone parapet, like a black ant heap, 
several thousand people moved in the snow. By the bridge 
stood a group of rowdy men, bawling at the soldiers who 
blocked the way across the bridge and stood against the 
railings to the very end, barely visible in the mist and 
falling snow. 

“Why do you block up the bridge? Let us pass!” the 
rowdy crowd shouted. 

“We want to get to the town.” 

“It’s a shame to oppress the population like this!” 

“The bridge is for walking across, not for the likes of 
you. ...” 

“Are you Russians or not? Let us pass!” 

A tall non-commissioned officer wearing four St. George 
medals was pacing from side to side of the bridge, jin¬ 
gling his big spurs. When the crowd began to swear at 
him he turned his melancholy pock-marked yellowish face. 

“I say, how you do talk!” His twisted moustache 
trembled. “I can’t let you cross the bridge. If you at¬ 
tempt to I shall fire.” 

“The soldiers won’t fire!” the rowdy set yelled. 

“They’ve stuck you up there, you pock-marked devil! 
You dog!” 

The non-commissioned officer again turned and spoke, 

[372 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


and though his voice was harsh and imperative as a mili¬ 
tary voice should be, in his words wonder and alarm could 
be detected as in the words of every one these past three 
days. The crowd was conscious of it and swore and 
pushed against the barrier. 

Some tall man in crooked pince-nez, a scarf wrapped 
round his long neck, came up to the crowd and spoke in 
a loud voice. 

“They interfere with our movements; barriers are put 
up everywhere; chains are put across bridges; it is a 
mockery. Are we not to be allowed to move freely about 
the town now ? Citizens, ignore the soldiers; go to the 
other side across the ice.” 

“Right! Across the ice! Hurrah!” the crowd shouted, 
and instantly several men ran down the snow-covered 
stone steps to the river. The tall man with his scarf 
flying behind him, set off resolutely across the ice, past the 
bridge. The soldiers bent over and called from aloft: 
“Hi! turn back or we’ll fire ! Turn back, you long devil!” 

The man, however, walked on without turning. More 
and more people followed him. They clattered down to 
the ice and their black forms ran over the snow. The 
soldiers yelled after them from the bridge, the people put 
their hands to their mouths and yelled back. One sol¬ 
dier aimed, but another touched him on the shoulder and 
he did not fire. 


It turned out later that none of the people who went 
out into the street had any set plan, but when they were 
confronted by barriers on the bridges and street crossings, 
as is always the case, they instantly wanted to do the 
thing that was forbidden, they wanted to cross the bridge 

[ 373 ] 





THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


and to collect in crowds. Imaginations became heated. 
A rumour spread through the town that the disorders 
were organized by some one. 

At the end of the second day the units of the Pavlovsky 
Regiment lay down on the Nevsky, and opened a longitu¬ 
dinal fire at the crowds and odd passers-by. The populace 
- began to realize that something like revolution was hap¬ 
pening. 

But where was its hotbed, and where were its leaders, 
no one knew. The troops did not know, nor did the 
Third Section, nor the police, nor, moreover, did the dic¬ 
tator and favourite, the Siberian cloth manufacturer, who, 
at one time in the Troitska Hotel in Simbirsk, had had 
his head smashed open with a door panel by a landowner 
named Naumov. The damage caused to the skull and 
brain had brought on headaches and neurasthenia, and 
later, when he was entrusted with the government of the 
Russian Empire, fatal confusion. The hotbed of the 
revolution was everywhere, in every house, in every citi¬ 
zen’s head seething with thoughts of anger and discon¬ 
tent. The police caught at shadows. They had, in fact, 
to arrest two million, four hundred thousand inhabitants. 
The workers’ demonstration of the 23rd February dropped 
the spark and the fire kindled. 


The whole of that day Ivan Ilyitch had spent in the 
street. Like every one he felt a strange and continuous 
dizziness. He could feel the excitement grow in the town 
almost to madness. People were cast into a general tur¬ 
moil, into an incoherent mass with neither reason nor will, 
and this mass wandered excitedly through the streets, 

[ 374 ] 



THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


seeking and longing for the flash, which, though blinding, 
would weld them into a coherent whole. 

The excited human herd had so far gone to pieces that 
the firing even had little effect on anybody. Wildly the 
people rushed to the two corpses of women in print dresses 
and the corpse of an old man in a raccoon coat, who were 
lying at the corner of Vladimir Street. . . . 

When the volleys became more frequent, the people 
stole away along the walls. 

At dusk the firing ceased. A cold wind blew which 
cleared the sky and drove the heavy clouds in masses to 
the sea, and through them floated the sombre glow of the 
setting sun. Low above the town, where the sky was 
coal black, hung the clear-cut crescent of the moon. 

The street lamps were not lighted that night. Windows 
were dark and front doors closed. Rifles were piled all 
along the deserted, misty Nevsky. Sentries stood at street 
crossings. The moonlight played now on a mirror-like 
window, now on the tram lines, now on the steel of bayo¬ 
nets. It was quiet and still. Only in the houses, in dead 
sheeplike voices, the telephone receivers murmured mad 
words about the events of the day. 


On the morning of the 25th February, the Znamensky 
Square was filled with troops and police. Before the 
North Hotel were mounted police on golden, slender¬ 
legged, dancing horses. Foot police were standing around 
the monument and in groups about the square. At the 
station were bearded and merry Cossacks in battered fur 
caps, with bags of hay behind them on the saddle. The 
dirty grey coats of the Pavlovsky men could be seen in the 
Nevsky direction. 


[ 375 ] 



THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


With a suit-case in his hand, Ivan Ilyitch was walking 
up the stone entrance to the station, from whence there 
was a view of the whole square. In the middle of the 
square on a blood-red block of granite, mounted on a 
huge horse, whose head was drooping from the weight of 
its rider, sat the Emperor, heavy as the gravity of the 
earth. His stern shoulders and small cap were covered 
with snow. He sat facing north. 

At his base, pushing from the direction of five streets, 
were yelling, shouting and swearing crowds. 

Just as on the bridge the day before, the soldiers, mostly 
the Cossacks, rode up to them in pairs and abused and 
jeered at them. The groups of policemen, tall, gloomy 
men, were silent; there was evident uncertainty among 
them. It was like the anxiety felt before battle, which 
Ivan Ilyitch knew well. The enemy was already on your 
shoulders; it was clear that you had to act, but you were 
ordered to wait and the minutes dragged on painfully. 
Suddenly the station door flew open and on the steps there 
appeared a pale gendarme officer, wearing the shoulder- 
straps of a colonel. He was in a short coat and had a 
new leather strap across his shoulder. He drew himself 
up and looked round the square; his blue eyes alighted 
on the face of Ivan Ilyitch. He ran lightly down the 
steps between the Cossacks, who made way for him, and 
spoke some words to a Cossack captain, looking up into 
the latter’s face. The Cossack officer, sitting easily in his 
saddle, listened to him with a crooked smile. As he spoke 
the colonel motioned in the direction of the Old Nevsky 
and walked away through the snow in the square with a 
light, springy gait. There came up to him an inspector, 
tightly belted round his huge stomach; his hand trembled 
as he saluted; his face was purple. . . . From the direc- 

[ 376 ] 


I 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


tion of the Old Nevsky the cries of approaching crowds 
grew louder and singing could be heard. Some one 
clutched Ivan Ilyitch by the leg and a man scrambled up 
beside him, an excited, sweaty man in a wadding coat, no 
cap and a red scratch across his dirty face. 

“Brothers, Cossacks!” he cried in that terrible, rending 
voice with which people cry at murder or bloodshed, a 
wild voice of the steppes which made the heart sink and 
the eyes gaze with madness. . . . “Brothers, they tried 
to kill me. ... It means death for us. . . . Brothers, 
save us. . . .” 

The Cossacks turned in their saddles and stared at him 
in silence. Their faces grew pale, their eyes opened wide. 

Meanwhile, on the Old Nevsky, the black heads of the 
approaching Kolpinsky workers seethed. A red flag tied 
to a pole flapped in the wind. The mounted police drew 
away from the North Hotel and immediately unsheathed 
swords flashed in their hands. The crowd shrieked 
wildly. Ivan Ilyitch once more saw the gendarme colonel. 
He was running with one hand on his revolver case and 
the other waving at the Cossacks. The Kolpinsky work¬ 
ers threw lumps of ice and stones at the colonel and the 
police. The golden, slender-legged horses danced more 
wildly. Revolvers fired faintly and smoke could be seen 
at the base of the monument. It was the police firing at 
the Kolpinsky crowds. Immediately, among the Cos¬ 
sacks, some ten paces from the spot where Ivan Ilyitch 
was standing, a red, hook-nosed Don mare reared up, 
and the Cossack, bending down to her neck, with a few 
bounds was at the colonel, his sword unsheathed on the 
way. He swished it with a back stroke and again the 
mare reared. 

Every one rushed to the scene of the Cossack’s mur- 

[ 377 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


der. The crowd broke the barriers and poured into the 
square. . . . Faint firing could be heard here and there, 
which was drowned in the general cry of: “Hurrah! 
hurrah!” 


“Teliegin, what are you doing here?” 

“I decided to go away today. I don’t care what it’s 
on, a goods train or an engine.” 

“Give up the idea. You can’t go now! There’s a revo¬ 
lution on, my dear fellow. ...” Antoshka Arnoldov, un¬ 
shaven. with red eyelashes and rolling eyes, was clutch¬ 
ing Ivan Ilyitch by the lapel of his coat with trembling 
fingers. 

“Did you see them cut off the gendarme’s head? A 
wonderful sight! You don’t understand, you fool, there’s 
a revolution!” Antoshka spoke as in a fever. They were 
standing pressed against the station wall by the crowd. 
“The Litovsk and Volinsky regiments refused to fire this 
morning and a company of the Pavlovsky Regiment 
walked out into the street with their arms. The town is 
in a thorough muddle, no one knows anything. Soldiers 
are swarming on the Nevsky like flies, afraid to go to 
their barracks. . . . Our newspaper has arranged a feed¬ 
ing centre in a hair-dressing saloon in honour of Bakunin. 
. . . Come to ‘The Red Bells’ tonight. You’ll hear 
everything there. ...” 

Antoshka let go of Teliegin and dived into the crowd. 
Ivan Ilyitch pushed his way through the noisy crowd in 
the station waiting-rooms and reached the platform. 
Trains were standing on the lines, the men on them had 
struck work. 


I 


i 


[ 378 ] 



XXXV 


Dasha and Katia, dressed in big coats and with down 
shawls on their heads, were walking along the dimly 
lighted Malaya Nikitskaya. A thin sheet of ice crunched 
beneath their feet. In the cold, green and starry sky 
hung the two-horned moon, thin and clear. A dog barked 
within a gate here and there. Dasha was smiling into the 
wet down of her shawl and listening to the crunching of 
the ice. 

“Katia l” 

“Dasha, my dear, don’t stop, or we shall be late.” 

“Katia, if some instrument could be invented and put 
here”—Dasha placed her hand on her breast—-“it would 
describe some extraordinary thing.” . . . Dasha began 
to sing softly and clearly. “You see, this is repeated in 
another tone, like this.” She sang and then laughed. 

Katia took her by the arm. “Come on, come on.” After 
a few paces Dasha stopped once more. 

“Katia, do you believe there’s a revolution?” 

“Yes. Can’t you feel the excitement in the very air ?” 

“That’s because of the spring, Katia. See how green 
the sky is.” 

In the distance the yellow light of an electric lamp 
shone above the porch of the Law Club. Under the in¬ 
fluence of the wild rumours from Petersburg the Cadet 
section had that evening organized a meeting for half¬ 
past nine to exchange impressions and to formulate a 
general course of action in these anxious days. 

The sisters ran up to the second floor and without re¬ 
moving their coats, merely taking off their shawls, they 

[ 379 ] 




THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


entered a hall, packed with people, who were listening to 
a ruddy-complexioned, bearded, burly gentleman, who 
was gesticulating agreeably with his hands. 

“Events are moving with a dizzy rapidity.” His teeth 
gleamed white as he spoke. “In Petersburg complete 
power was yesterday assumed by General Khabalov, who 
posted this bill all over the town: ‘During the last few 
days there have been disorders in Petersburg, accompanied 
by force and attempts on the life of troops and police. I 
forbid all gathering in the street. I must warn the in¬ 
habitants of Petersburg that I have ordered the use of 
arms on the part of the troops, who will stop at nothing 
to restore order in the town!’ ” . . . 

“Executioners!” A student’s bass voice sounded 
through the hall. The speaker touched the bell. 

“This announcement, as was to be expected, filled the 
cup of patience to overflowing. Twenty-five thousand 
troops of all arms of the Petersburg garrison went over 
to the side of the rebellion-” 

Before he had time to finish the sentence, the hall rang 
with applause. Men jumped on their chairs, shouting and 
gesticulating, breaking the old rules. The speaker, smil¬ 
ing broadly, looked round at the stormy hall, touched the 
bell once more and continued: 

“An important telephone message has just been re¬ 
ceived.” He dived into the pocket of his check jacket, 
slowly pulled out and unfolded a slip of paper. “Today 
the President of the Imperial Duma, Mr. Rodzianko, dis¬ 
patched a telegram to the Emperor: ‘The situation is 
serious. Anarchy is rampant in the capital. The govern¬ 
ment is paralyzed. Transport, food and fuel supply are 
completely disorganized. Disorderly firing is going on in 
the streets. Troop units are firing on one another. It is 

[380 ] 



THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


essential immediately to entrust some one who has the 
confidence of the country to form a new government. 
Delay is impossible. Any delay spells death. I pray God 
that in this hour the responsibility does not fall on a 
crowned head/ ” 

The ruddy-complexioned gentleman put down the paper 
and looked round the hall with merry eyes. All faces ex¬ 
pressed intense curiosity. Moscow did not recall such a 
soul-stirring spectacle. 

“We are on the verge of fulfillment of the greatest 
events in our history/’ he continued in a velvety, resonant 
voice. “It may be that at this moment”—he made a mo¬ 
tion of the hand like Dante’s in his statue—“the hopes of 
so many generations have been accomplished and the for¬ 
lorn ghosts of the Decembrists are avenged. ...” 

“Oh, God!” unable to control herself, exclaimed some 
woman’s voice in the centre of the hall. 

“It may be that tomorrow Russia may mingle in the 
glad, brotherly chorus of freedom.” 

“Hurrah! Freedom!” excited voices yelled. 

The gentleman sank into a chair and passed the back 
of his hand over his forehead. From the corner of the 
table there rose up a faded man with long, straw-coloured 
hair, a narrow face and a fed, dull beard. He did not 
look at any one and began to speak in a drawling, nasal 
voice: 

“The information we have just heard is extremely in¬ 
teresting. The position seems seriously to be leading to 
the abolition of the aristocratic, bureaucratic governing 
class. There is nothing unexpected in what has hap¬ 
pened. If not today then in a month the troops were 
bound to revolt and the workers make an attempt to 
seize power.” He pulled a handkerchief out from a side 

[381 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


pocket, blew his nose, folded the handkerchief and thrust 
it into his crushed jacket. Behind Dasha, who sat in the 
doorway on the same chair as her sister, some one asked: 

“Who is that speaking?” 

“Comrade Kusma,” some one whispered quickly. “In 
1905 he was in the soviet of workers’ deputies. He has 
just returned from exile. He’s a wonderful man.” 

“I do not share the former speaker’s enthusiasm,” con¬ 
tinued Comrade Kusma, looking sleepily at the inkstand, 
“even if the Tsar’s government were to renounce power 
in the next few days, it would still be foolish to rejoice, for 
power will fall into the paws of the bourgeois class and 
squabbling will be just as unavoidable in the future.” He 
now raised his eyes and ali could see that they were 
green, cold and dull. “It has long been time to cast off 
the Manilov fantasies. Revolution is a serious thing. 
Brotherly choruses and songs of freedom may entertain 
landless aristocrats, but are of no interest to the fattened 
sons of merchants.” . . . 

“Who is he? . . . What does he say? . . . Get him to 
shut up,” angry voices exclaimed. Comrade Kusma raised 
his voice: 

“The revolutionary process has been going on in the 
country for twenty years, and now we may consider it 
ripe. Our duty is to lance deep to let the pus out to the 
surface. We must bring face to face, without any inter¬ 
mediaries, the proletariat and the bourgeois and aristo¬ 
cratic classes. It is not freedom that we want, bandied 
about for a hundred years like a prostitute by petty shop¬ 
keepers and drivelling poets; we want civil war. ...” 

His last words were hardly distinguishable for the 
noise in the hall. A few men in morning coats rushed to 
the table. Comrade Kusma stepped back, got down from 

[382 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


the platform and went out by a side door. There rose in 
his place a well-known worker in child education, a stout 
woman in pince-nez, with a nervous twitch. 

“We have just heard a revolting ...” 

Dasha, just then, heard some one whisper tenderly into 
her ear : “Good evening, my dear.” 

Without turning she sprang up. Ivan Ilyitch stood in 
the doorway. She looked at him. He was the handsom¬ 
est man in the world, her very own. As on more than one 
occasion, Ivan Ilyitch was amazed that Dasha was dif¬ 
ferent from what he had imagined her to be. The hot 
colour had risen to her cheeks. Her eyes were a trans¬ 
parent grey-blue and bottomless, like two cool lakes. She 
was so absolutely perfect that Ivan Ilyitch turned pale. 
“Good evening,” Dasha said softly and took his arm. 
They walked out into the street. 

In the street Dasha stopped and looked at Ivan Ilyitch 
with a smile. She sighed, raised her arms and kissed him 
on the lips. Her lips were tender and trusting. There 
was a smell of fur about her and the charm of feminine 
perfumes. In silence she took his arm again and they 
walked on over the crunching crust of ice, sparkling in 
the light of the moon, which hung low over the middle of 
the street in the dark green depths of the sky. 

“Do you love me, Ivan?” 

“Dasha!” 

“I do love you, Ivan! I only realize it now. I did so 
long for you to come!” 

“I couldn’t, you know that.” . . . 

“You are not angry that I wrote you those nasty let¬ 
ters? You say anything in a letter ...” 

“It seems incredible that you should love me.” 

“Whom should I love, then?” 


[383 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


“You don’t understand. . . . When I saw you stand up 
and looked at you, my heart was torn.” . . . 

Ivan Ilyitch stopped and looked at the sweet, smiling 
face raised to his. It looked particularly sweet and simple 
in the town shawl, beneath which were the dark lines of 
the eyebrows and the kind, tender eyes. He drew her 
gently to himself. She came close to him, still looking 
into his eyes. Once more he kissed her on the lips and 
they walked on. 

“Will you stay long, Ivan?” 

“I don’t know with present events.” 

“There is revolution, Ivan.” 

“The things that are happening in Petersburg! I will 
tell you later.” . . . 

“Ivan, do you know ...” Dasha was keeping pace 
with him and staring at the tips of his boots. 

“Yes.” 

“I shall come with you ... to your place.” . . . 

Ivan Ilyitch made no reply. Dasha could feel how he 
tried to take deep breaths and could not. She felt a ten¬ 
der pity for him. 


[384 ] 


XXXVI 


The following day was remarkable only in that both 
were convinced of the relativity of time. Thus, when 
Ivan Ilyitch took an izvozchik from his hotel on the 
Tverskaya to Arbat Street, it seemed to him that they 
were about eighteen months getting there. “The time 
has gone by, sir, when you can hire an izvozchik for half 
a rouble,” the man said; “people say they’ve got freedom 
in Petersburg. If not today then we’ll get freedom in 
Moscow tomorrow. Look at that policeman! I should 
like to lash my whip in his face, the son of a dog. You 
wait, sir, we shall pay them all out!” 

Ivan Ilyitch met Dasha at the dining-room door. She 
was in a white dressing-gown, but her ash-coloured hair 
was dressed. The bell of time struck, but time had 
stopped. The moment expanded and was filled with 
Dasha’s words and laughter and with her soft hair spar¬ 
kling in the morning sun. Ivan Ilyitch became restless 
when Dasha left him to go so much as to the other end 
of the table. Dasha raised her arms to open the doors of 
the sideboard and the broad sleeves of her dressing-gown 
slipped down. Ivan Ilyitch was sure that no human be¬ 
ing could have such arms; only the two white vaccination 
marks above the elbow testified to their being human. 
Dasha took out the cups, talking and laughing meanwhile. 

She made Ivan Ilyitch drink several cups of coffee 
and she talked and he talked, but human speech appar¬ 
ently had only meaning in time that moved ordinarily; 
today their words had no meaning. Ekaterina Dmitrievna, 
who was with them in the dining-room, heard Teliegin 

[385 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


and Dasha, in their wonder and joy, say nonsensical things, 
which they instantly forgot, about Dasha’s vaccination 
marks, the revolution, the head cut off in Petersburg, 
Dasha’s hair, which could not be dressed properly in any 
kind of way. 

A maid brought in the newspapers. Ekaterina 
Dmitrievna opened the “Russkia Bedomosti” and gave an 
exclamation of surprise. She then read aloud the Em¬ 
peror’s fatal order about the dismissal of the Imperial 
Duma and, printed beneath it, in big type, was a telegram 
announcing the formation of the Committee of the Im¬ 
perial Duma “for the restoration of order in Petrograd 
and for conducting public business.” 

Dasha and Teliegin were greatly astonished at this, but 
the other news in the “Russkia Bedomosti” Ekaterina 
Dmitrievna read to herself. “Come into my room,” 
Dasha said to Teliegin and led him to it along a dark pas¬ 
sage. She was the first to walk in and exclaiming, “Wait, 
wait, don’t look!” she thrust some white object into a 
drawer. 

Ivan Ilyitch saw Dasha’s room for the first time. 
There was her dressing-table with the many incompre¬ 
hensible objects on it, the severe, narrow white bedstead 
with two pillows, one large and one small. Dasha slept 
on the large one and put the small one under her elbow. 
There stood a big armchair by the window with a down 
shawl thrown over the back. 

Dasha asked Ivan Ilyitch to sit down in the armchair, 
while she draw up a footstool and sat down opposite him, 
resting her elbows on her knees and her chin on her hands. 
Without blinking she looked into his face and asked him 
to tell her how he loved her. The bell of time sounded 
a second span. 

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‘‘If I were offered everything there is, Dasha,” he said, 
“I should not be any better off. Do you understand?” 
Dasha nodded. “Alone, what use am I to myself ? What 
can I do with myself?” Dasha nodded. “Eat, walk, 
sleep, what for? What use are my hands and feet? 
Supposing I were fabulously rich, what would be the good 
of it? Think of what misery it is to be alone!” Dasha 
nodded. “But now that you sit there like that, I don’t 
exist; I am not conscious of myself. I only feel you, 
happiness. You are everything, you are mine. . . . When 
I look at you my head swims; I wonder if you really 
breathe and live and are mine. Dasha, do you under¬ 
stand me a little?” . . . 

“I remember,” Dasha said, “when we were on deck and 
the wind blew and the wine sparkled in the cut-glass 
wine glasses, how I had a sudden feeling then that you 
would be my fellow-traveller.” 

“Do you remember the floating blue shadows?” 

Dasha shut her eyes and it instantly seemed to her 
that she remembered some wonderful blue shadows. She 
remembered the gulls flying after the boat and the low 
banks and the sparkling, sunlit path in the distance on 
the water and how it had seemed to her that it would end 
in a shining sea of happiness. Dasha even remembered 
the dress she had worn. How many weary years had 
passed since then! She felt sorry for herself and in¬ 
tensely sorry for her sister, Katia. . . . She took Ivan 
Ilyitch’s hands and hid her face in them and he could feel 
her tears between his fingers. 

Ekaterina Dmitrievna rushed back from the Law Club 
in the evening, excited and happy. She related the news: 

“In Petersburg power had passed to the Duma Com¬ 
mittee and ministers had been arrested, but there was an 

[387 1 


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alarming rumour that the Emperor had left camp and 
that General Ivanov and a whole corps were marching on 
Petrograd to quell it. As for Moscow, tomorrow they 
have decided to storm the Kremlin and the arsenal. . . . 
Dasha and I are coming to you tomorrow morning, Ivan 
Ilyitch, to see the revolution.” . . . 


% 


[388 ] 


XXXVII 


From the hotel window they could see a black stream 
of people moving along the narrow Tverskaya. There 
were caps, caps and shawls and yellow patches of faces. 
All windows were crammed with people and boys stood 
on the roofs. 

Ekaterina Dmitrievna, her veil raised to her eyebrows, 
was saying as she first clutched Teliegin’s arm and then 
Dasha’s in hot fingers: “How awful! how awful!” 

“I assure you, Daria Dmitrievna, the town is in a very 
peaceful mood,” Ivan Ilyitch said. “Before you got here 
I rushed over to the Kremlin. Negotiations are proceed¬ 
ing there; the arsenal is apparently to be given up without 
firing.” . . . 

“But why are all these people here? What a lot of 
them there are ! What are they going to do ?” 

Dasha was watching the agitated stream of heads and 
the outlines of roofs and towers. In the distance, above 
the crosses and the dull golden domes of the Kremlin 
churches, above the eagles with outspread wings and the 
pointed towers, daws circled, settling on the towers, fly¬ 
ing up and disappearing in the misty height. 

It seemed to Dasha that some great rivers had burst 
the ice and were overflowing the earth and that she and 
the man she loved were caught in the stream. There was 
nothing to do but to keep firm hold of his hand and to 
love him. Her heart fluttered in glad excitement like the 
birds on high. 




[ 389 ] 


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“I must see everything. Let us go out,” Katia said, 
seizing her coat. 


The Town Hall, the headquarters of the revolutionaries, 
a dirty brick building with pillars that looked like bottles 
and balusters and balconies and towers, was decorated 
with red flags. Bits of fustian stuff were wound round 
the pillars and were suspended from the ledge of the 
porch of the main entrance. Near by, on the frozen pav¬ 
ing-stones, were four guns on high wheels, looking like 
tarantulas. At the entrance, at the corners and the roof 
were bent machine-gun men wearing slips of red ribbon 
on their shoulder-straps. Huge crowds were looking in 
happy wonder at the dirty windows of the Town Hall. 
On the balcony above the porch there appeared an excited 
little person, who looked like a beetle, and flourishing his 
arms he began to shout some inaudible words. Enthusi¬ 
astic cries came from the crowd. 

When they had seen the flags and the guns, the crowd 
departed over the thawing, dirty snow, through the deep 
Tverskaya arch to the Red Square, where, at the Spassov 
and Nikolski gates the revolutionary troop units were ne¬ 
gotiating with the emissaries of a reserve regiment, shut 
up in the Kremlin. In the grey daylight the big, thick, 
crumbling walls of the Kremlin, with its square towers 
and green ledges, and the two-headed eagle with spread 
wings on the spires, seemed older than ever. A flock of 
daws circled above the sad place, above the excited masses 
of simple folk, thrilled as at doomsday, and they flew 
away over the town, over the river Moscow. 

Katia, Dasha and Teliegin were borne by the crowd 
to the door of the Town Hall. Coming from the direction 

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of the Tverskaya the noise of the crowd grew louder and 
louder. Hats and handkerchiefs were waved in the air. 

“Comrades, let us pass, please. . . . Comrades, observe 
the rules . . came excited, youthful voices. Pushing 
through the crowd which made way reluctantly to the 
Town Hall entrance came four schoolboys, flourishing 
their rifles in the air and a pretty, untidy girl in a green 
hat, carrying a sword. They were conducting four big 
policemen, whom they had arrested, long-whiskered 
peasants with hands twisted behind them and lowered, 
solemn faces. In front of them was an inspector with¬ 
out a cap; at the temple of his dark-grey shaven head was 
a dark patch of congealed blood. With his red, piercing 
eyes, he glanced quickly at the intoxicated faces of the 
crowd. His shoulder-straps had been torn from his shoul¬ 
der with the flesh. 

“They’ve got their deserts at last!” said a voice in the 
crowd. 

“They had their little game with us.” . . . 

“They’ve ruled over us long enough.” . . . 

“The damned tribe of them.” . . . 

“They ought to be tortured.” . . . 

“Come, boys, let us go for them.” . . . 

“Comrades, comrades ! Let us pass ! Observe the rules 
of the revolution,” came the schoolboys’ broken voices. 
They dashed to the entrance, pushing the policemen in 
front of them, and disappeared through the big doors. 
Several people managed to go in with them and among 
the number were Katia, Dasha and Teliegin. 

In a bare, high, dimly lighted vestibule, machine-gun 
men squatted on the damp floor by their guns. A fat¬ 
cheeked student, evidently crazy with shouting and fa¬ 
tigue, rushed at all the newcomers. 


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"‘I don’t want to know anything. Your pass!” 

Some people showed their passes, others walked away 
with a wave of the hand and went up the broad stair¬ 
case to the second floor. In a wide, dusty corridor, sleepy 
and silent soldiers, who would not let go of their rifles, 
were lying along the walls. Some were lazily chewing 
bread, others were snoring, hugging their knees. The idle 
crowd rushed past them and read the strange notices 
pinned to the doors and watched the excited commissaries 
running from room to room. 

Katia, Dasha and Teliegin, when they had seen these 
wonders, pushed their way into a hall with two large win¬ 
dows hung with faded purple curtains. The semi-circular 
seats of the amphitheatre were also covered with purple. 
On the main wall, enclosing black empty spaces, were the 
golden frames of the portraits of the emperors. In front 
of them, her bronze cloak thrown off, was a marble statue 
of Katerine, smiling agreeably and subtly at her people. 

The seats of the amphitheatre were filled with loung¬ 
ing, dirty, weary, unshaven men. Some of them slept 
with faces buried on the desks, others were leisurely pull¬ 
ing off the skin from sausages and eating bread. Below, 
in front of the smiling statue of Katerine, at a green 
baize table with a long fringe, twelve men were sitting. 
They were young men with lean faces and high cheek¬ 
bones. One of them, who had long straw-coloured hair 
and beard, was picking an egg and throwing the shell on 
those cobwebs on the window. Suddenly she recollected 
where she had seen the man before who was picking the 
egg and where she had felt that deadly despair and seen 
those cobwebs on the window. Suddenly she recollected 
her dream. . . . 

“Dasha, do you see Comrade Kusma at the table?” 
Katia asked. 

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A sharp-nosed girl with bobbed hair dashed up to Com¬ 
rade Kusma at this moment and whispered something in 
his ear. He listened without turning and went on chew¬ 
ing his egg, then he got up and clucking his tongue, said: 

“Gutchkov, the M;ayor, has declared a second time that 
he will not allow arms to the workers. I move that with¬ 
out discussion we pass a protest against this aggressive ac¬ 
tion on the part of the revolutionary committee, which 
is becoming more and more bourgeois and reactionary.” 

There was a stir on the amphitheatre seats. Some one 
raised his head from his desk, yawned and stretched out 
a horny hand. Every one put up his hands in token of 
assent. 

Teliegin at last found out (he had asked an under¬ 
grown schoolboy who was anxiously smoking a cigarette) 
that in the Katerine Hall a meeting of the soviet of 
workers’ deputies was in progress and had lasted for two 
days. 

At dinner time the quiet peasants of the reserve regi¬ 
ment which occupied the Kremlin, noticed the steam from 
the portable kitchens moving along the Red Square. They 
surrendered and opened the gate. A shout went through¬ 
out the square and caps flew in the air. On Lobnoe 
Mesto, where at one time there had lain the naked dead 
body of Dmitri the False, in the mask of a beast, with a 
piper’s reed on his stomach, and from whence they used 
to proclaim the advent and downfall of Tsars and the 
freedom and bondage of the Russian people, on this same 
hillock, many times overgrown with burdock and again 
soaked with blood, there stood up a little soldier in a dirty 
coat. He bowed and pulled his cap over both ears and 
spoke some confused, incomprehensible words which were 
lost in the noise. He was a wretched little man, raked in 

[ 393 ] 


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at the last mobilization from some unknown, remote spot, 
yet a lady, with her feathered hat at the back of her 
head, scrambled up to kiss him. And he was seized from 
the Lobnoe Mesto and carried on high by the shouting 
crowd. 

On the Tverskaya, at that moment, a smart fellow from 
the crowd climbed up Skobelev’s monument in front of 
the Governor-Generars house and tied a red rag to his 
sword. There were shouts of “Hurrah!” Several mysteri¬ 
ous persons found their way through the alley to the 
secret service department, from whence came a sound of 
breaking glass. Clouds of smoke rolled out and pieces of 
paper were carried by the wind. The crowd shouted 
“Hurrah!” On the Tverski Boulevard a famous woman 
writer, with tears in her eyes, was speaking at Pushkin’s 
monument about the dawn of a new life. With the help 
of her husband, also a writer, she thrust a little red flag 
onto the pensive statue of Pushkin. The crowd shouted 
“Hurrah!” The whole town seemed intoxicated that day. 
People did not go home till late at night, and stood about 
in groups, talking, weeping with joy, embracing and wait¬ 
ing for some telegrams to come. After three years of 
misery, hatred and blood, the trusting, lethargic Slavonic 
soul, unconscious of its own measure, brimmed over. On 
the Bolshaya Dmitrovka, at half past eleven, a jeweller’s 
shop was cleared and there were other robberies in many 
places besides. 


Katia, Dasha and Teliegin returned home at dusk. 
They found that the housemaid, Liza, had gone to a meet¬ 
ing on the Prechistenki Boulevard, and that the cook was 
howling in the kitchen where she had locked herself in. 
Katia forced her to open the door. 

[ 394 ] 



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“What is the matter, Marfusha?” 

“The Tsar has been killed!” she said, covering her 
swollen mouth with her hands. She smelt of spirits. 

“Don’t talk such nonsense!” Katia said with annoy¬ 
ance. “No one has been killed!” 

“The porter’s wife swore he was.” 

“And what is that to you? Are you sorry for him?” 

“No, but I’m frightened.” 

Katia put the kettle on the gas and went to lay the 
table. Dasha lay down on the drawing-room sofa. Telie- 
gin sat at her feet. Dasha said: 

“Ivan, my dear, if I should happen to fall asleep, wake 
me when tea comes. I want tea badly.” 

She turned over, put her hand under her cheek and said 
now in a sleepy, childish voice: 

“I do love you.” 

A down shawl shone white in the twilight, the shawl 
Dasha had worn. Ivan Ilyitch sat motionless; his heart 
was full. At the top of the room a light appeared through 
a crack in the door. There was a rattling of cups and 
spoons. Presently the door opened and Katia came in. 
She sat down beside Ivan Ilyitch on the big sofa and 
put her hands round her knee. After a while she asked 
in a whisper: 

“Is Dasha sleeping?” 

“She asked me to wake her for tea.” 

“There is Marfusha howling in the kitchen that the 
Tsar has been killed. What is going to happen, Ivan 
Ilyitch? I feel as if all the dams were broken. My heart 
aches. I am anxious about Nikolai Ivanovitch. Do 
send him a telegram as early as possible in the morning. 
. . . Tell me, when are you and Dasha going to Petro- 


[ 395 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


Ivan Ilyitch did not reply. Katia turned her face to 
his and looked at him with her large eyes, so like Dasha’s 
but more womanly and serious. She smiled gently and 
sighed, then she drew Ivan Ilyitch to herself and kissed 
him on the forehead. 


The next morning the whole town poured into the 
streets. Along the Tverskaya, through the crowds and 
ceaseless shouting of hurrah, moved lorries full of sol¬ 
diers, bristling with swords and bayonets. Boys rode 
astride the rattling guns. On the dirty piles of snow, 
along the pavement, maintaining public order, were young 
ladies with uplifted swords and strained faces and school¬ 
boys who showed no mercy. This was the voluntary 
militia. Shopkeepers were climbing up steps, pulling 
down the Imperial eagle on their signs. A group of con¬ 
sumptive-looking girls from a tobacco factory marched 
about with a portrait of Leo Tolstoy, who looked severely 
at the strange doings with knitted brows. There could 
not be a war, it seemed, nor hatred. It seemed that all 
one had to do was to hang out a red flag on some high 
belfry and the whole world would realize there was no 
other force in the world than joy and freedom, love and 
life. . . . 

When the telegram arrived announcing the abdication 
of the Tsar in favour of Michael, no one was especially 
stirred. It seemed that greater wonders were to be ex¬ 
pected in these days. . . . 


The stars shimmered in the transparent depths of the 
sky, above the uneven lines of roofs and the orange sun- 

[ 396 ] 




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set. The bare, black branches of the limes were distinct 
and motionless. Below them it was quite dark. The 
frozen puddles on the pavements crunched beneath the 
feet. Dasha stopped, and not letting go of Ivan Ilyitch’s 
arm, which she held with both hands, she peered through 
the low palings at the candles being lighted in the deep 
little window of the old church, Nicolas on Hen’s Feet. 

The little church and churchyard were in the shadow 
of the limes. A door banged and shuffling his felt 
boots came a small man in a long coat reaching to his 
heels and a mushroom hat. He was heard rattling his 
keys and then he began to mount the stairs to the belfry. 

“The sacristan has gone to ring the bell,” Dasha whis¬ 
pered, raising her head. The light of the setting sun was 
reflected on the belfry and the light of the stars shone 
on the ball on top. 

Boom! the bell rang out. Thus for three hundred 
years had it summoned the inhabitants for the repose of 
the soul before the coming sleep. Dasha made the sign 
of the cross. For a moment there rose in Ivan Ilyitch’s 
mind a picture of a chapel on the threshold of which sat 
a woman in a white coat with a dead baby in her lap. 
He pressed Dasha’s arm with his elbow. Dasha looked 
at him, questioning. Her mouth grew serious. 

“Would you like to?” she whispered hastily. “Here? 
Now ?” 

Ivan Ilyitch gave a broad smile. Dasha frowned, 
stamped her foot and turned away. 

“Dasha, you are not angry with me ?” 

<<T » 

1 am. 

“But who would marry us now?” 

“It doesn’t matter. I know I talked nonsense, but you 
shouldn’t have smiled. . . . There is nothing funny in it. 

[3971 


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When you are walking arm in arm with a man you love 
above everything in the world and you see a light in a 
church, it is quite natural to want to go in and be mar- 
ried.” . . . 

Dasha reflected and again took Ivan Ilyitch’s arm. 
“You know, we must be married here at the Hen’s 
Feet.” 

“Of course, I do.” 

“All right, then, I won’t be angry.” 

“Dasha, don’t you think we’ve got rather idiotic?” 

“Yes, Ivan; isn’t it terrible 1” 


e 


[ 398 ] 


XXXVIII 


“Citizens, soldiers of the free Russian army, I have the 
honour to congratulate you on this joyous holiday. The 
chains of our bondage are broken. In three days, without 
spilling a single drop of blood, the Russian people have 
accomplished the greatest revolution in history. Bloody 
Tsar Nicholas has abdicated the throne, his ministers are 
arrested and the heir to the throne, Michael, has refused 
the burdensome crown. Complete power has now been 
given to the people. At the head of the state is the 
Provisional Government, which has been entrusted with 
the task of electing an All-Russian Constituent Assem¬ 
bly on the basis of a universal, equal and secret vote. . . . 
Now . . . hail to the Russian Revolution! Hail to the 
Constituent Assembly! Hail to the Provisional Govern¬ 
ment.” . . . 

“Hurra-a-a-h!” came a prolonged roar of thousands of 
soldiers’ voices. Nikolai Ivanovitch Smokovnikov took 
a large drab handkerchief from the pocket of his leather 
coat and wiped his neck, face and beard. He was speak¬ 
ing from a wooden platform, reached by a layer of sleep¬ 
ers. Behind him stood the regiment commander, Tetkin, 
who had recently been promoted to the rank of colonel. 
His weather-beaten face, with the short beard and thick 
nose, wore an expression of keen attention. At the shout 
of hurrah, he saluted nervously. Before the platform, on 
a flat field, covered with dirty thawing snow, stood some 
two thousand soldiers without arms, in iron helmets and 
loose coats. They were listening open-mouthed to the 

[ 399 ] 


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strange words that the gentleman, as red as a turkey, was 
saying to them. In the grey mist in the distance were 
the burnt chimneys of a village, and beyond it were the 
German lines. Several ragged crows flew across the des¬ 
olate, dead place. 

“Soldiers!” Nikolai Ivanovitch continued, stretching 
out his hand with outspread fingers, the blood rushing to 
his neck, “yesterday you were still the lower rank, the 
speechless herd whom the Tsar’s Staff sent to the slaugh¬ 
ter. . . .You were not told why you had to die. . . . 
You were lashed for a fault and shot without trial.” 
(Colonel Tetkin coughed and shifted from one foot to 
the other. He remained silent, however, and bent his 
head attentively.) “The Provisional Government has 
appointed me Commissary of the army on the western 
front” (Nikolai Ivanovitch clenched his fist), “and I have 
to tell you that from now on there are no lower ranks. 
The term has been abolished. You are now soldiers, 
equal citizens of the Russian State. There is no differ¬ 
ence between soldiers and army commanders. The titles. 
Your Honour, Your Excellency, Your Highness, have 
been abolished. From now on you are to say, ‘Good day, 
Mr. General/ or ‘No, Mr. General,’ or ‘Yes, Mr. General.’ 
The humiliating replies of ‘Yes, Your Excellency/ ‘No, 
Your Excellency/ are abolished. A soldier need no longer 
salute an officer of any rank. He can shake hands with a 
general if he wants to.” . . . 

“Ha! ha! ha!” the crowd laughed cheerfully. Colonel 
Tetkin smiled and blinked his frightened little eyes. 

“And last and foremost, soldiers, so far, the war has 
been carried on by the Tsar’s government, now it is being 
waged by the people, by you. The Provisional Govern¬ 
ment therefore proposes that you should elect soldiers’ 

[ 400 ] 


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committees in the armies, company committees, battalion 
committees, regiment and army committees. These freely 
elected committees will conduct the affairs of the army, 
beginning with the commissariat down to equal participa¬ 
tion in the preparation of military plans. You must send 
to the committees men whom you trust! From now on 
the soldier’s finger will trace the war map by the side of 
the supreme commander-in-chief’s pencil. . . . Soldiers, 
I congratulate you on the great conquest of the revolu¬ 
tion.” . . . 

Shouts of hurrah again rang throughout the field. 
Tetkin stood erect, saluting. His face was grey and his 
eyes in abject horror were fixed on Nikolai Ivanovitch. 
Murmurs arose in the crowd. 

“How soon are we to make peace with the Germans?” 

“What’s the soap ration per man?” 

“Mr. Commissary, will the committees try men for 
stealing, or will they be tried by a court ?” 

“I’ve got a complaint to make, Mr.-” 

“What about our leave? I’ve got a weak stomach.” . . . 

“We’ve been rotting in the trenches for three months. 
We’re worn out.” . . . 

“Mr. Commissary, what is going on at home? Will 
they elect a king in Petersburg?” 

In order to reply more adequately, Nikolai Ivanovitch 
came down from the platform and was instantly sur¬ 
rounded by the excited, evil-smelling men. Colonel Tet¬ 
kin leant on the platform rail and watched the shaven head 
and fat neck of the military commissar moving among 
the mass of helmets. 

A red-haired, spiteful man with a coat thrown loosely 
on his shoulders (Tetkin knew the man well; he was a 
rowdy, quarrelsome fellow from the telephone company), 

[ 401 i 



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seized Nikolai Ivanovitch by the belt of his coat and, cast¬ 
ing a glance around, cried : 

“Mr. Commissar,, you spoke pleasant words to us and 
we listened to you pleasantly. . . . Now you must answer 
my question. . . . You’ve got to answer whether you can 
or not.” . . . 

The men cheered and pressed closer. Colonel Tetkin 
frowned and got down from the platform anxiously. 

“I’m going to put a question to you,” the soldier went on, 
his black finger-nail almost touching Nikolai Ivanovitch’s 
nose; “I got a letter from my village telling me that my 
cow has died. I never had a horse, and my wife and 
children have gone about the country begging. . . . Now, 
have you a right to shoot me if I desert? Tell me!” 

“If your own well-being is more dear to you than free¬ 
dom betray it, betray it, like Judas, and Russia will after¬ 
wards cast it in your teeth that you are not worthy to be 
a soldier of the revolutionary army! Go home!” Nikolai 
Ivanovitch shouted. 

“Don’t you shout at me!” 

“Who are you to shout at us?” 

“Soldiers!” Nikolai Ivanovitch stood on tiptoe. “There 
is some confusion. The first creed of the Revolution is 
faith in our allies. The free revolutionary army of Rus¬ 
sia must throw itself with renewed force on the enemy of 
freedom, imperialistic Germany.” 

“Have you ever made food for lice in the trenches, 
eh ?” a brutal voice asked. 

“He’s never seen lice in his life.” . . . 

“Give him a couple to breed from.” . . . 

“We don’t want you to tell us about freedom, we want 
you to tell us about the war. We’ve been fighting for 
three years. It’s well enough for you fattening your 

[ 402 ] 


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stomach at home, but we want to know when the war 
is going to end.” . . . 

“Soldiers!” Nikolai Ivanovitch cried once more. “The 
banner of the revolution has been raised; freedom and 
war to complete victory!” 

“You can’t make out the damned fool!” 

“And where is this victory? We’ve been fighting for 
three years and haven’t seen any victories.” . . . 

“What was the use of your getting rid of the Tsar 
then ?” 

“They got rid of him on purpose; he prevented them 
from dragging on the war.” . . . 

“Why do you stand staring at him, comrades? He’s 
been bribed.” . . . 

“You can see he’s an agent.” . . . 

Colonel Tetkin elbowed his way through the men and 
saw a big, lowering, dirty artilleryman clutch Nikolai 
Ivanovitch by the chest and shake him, yelling: “What 
made you come here? Now then, what made you come 
here?” . . . 

The back of Nikolai Ivanovitch’s round head receded 
into his neck, his upraised beard, drawn on the cheeks, 
as it were, shook. In pushing the man away, Nikolai 
Ivanovitch’s trembling fingers tore the collar of his coat. 
The man scowled, snatched off his iron helmet and struck 
Nikolai Ivanovitch several times over the head and 
face. . . . 


[ 403 ] 


XXXIX 


At the entrance to a large jeweller’s shop, Muraveichik 
& Co., there sat a night-watchman in a big coat and a 
militiaman, a quiet little peasant in a soldier’s tunic and 
with a piece of red ribbon sewn to the band of his cap. 
The sloping street was deserted; the mirrored windows 
of offices and shops were dark and shuttered. A scrap of 
crumpled paper was blown with a rustling sound along the 
street. A cold March wind whistled through the bare 
acacia trees and their black tangled branches shook above 
the paving stones. The moon shone as in the south, bright 
and clear, and hung like a Medusa above the town. The 
watchman in the big coat was talking in a whisper. “He 
dashed out of his study and said, ‘I shan’t believe it until 
I see the telegram.’ . . . And then the civil-servants 
showed him the telegram about the abdication of His 
Majesty, the Emperor, and when the Governor read it 
he burst into tears.” . . . 

“Aye, aye,” said the militiaman. 

“And in three days he was dismissed.” 

“Why ?” 

“Because he was a governor and they’ve abolished gov¬ 
ernors now.” 

“Is that so ?” 

“They’ve proclaimed freedom and every one can gov¬ 
ern himself now.” 

“It’s like taking the law into your own hands, eh?” 

“Well, the other day I paid a visit to the kitchen of the 
Governor’s palace. The porter there, Stepan, is a rela- 

[404 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


tion of mine. He’d put away his medals and galloon in a 
trunk and was wearing a shabby little cap. This is what 
we’ve come to,’ he says, when he sees me. ‘In my old age 
I’ve got to open the door to people that would have made 
me call a policeman to take them to the police station be¬ 
fore.’ ” 

“Aye, aye,” said the militiaman. 

“And he told me why the Tsar abdicated. . . . The 
Tsar was in Mogulev at the time and they suddenly spoke 
to him by direct telegram, saying this and that, that the 
people in Petersburg had rebelled, that the soldiers would 
not go against the people, and that they wanted to go 
back to their own homes. ‘Well,’ thought the Tsar, ‘this 
is only half a misfortune.’ And he summoned his gen¬ 
erals and said to them: ‘The people in Petersburg have re¬ 
belled, my kingdom is in danger. What shall I do ? Give 
me your advice.’ And he looked at the generals. And 
the generals wouldn’t give their advice and turned away 
like wolves in the forest.” . . . 

“What a calamity!” 

“There was only one who did not turn away. He was 
a drunken little old general. ‘Your Majesty,’ he says, 
‘command me and I’m ready to lie down and die for you.’ 
The Emperor shook his head. Of all his faithful servants 
only one had remained true to him and he was always 
drunk from morning to night. ‘What must be, must be. 
One man in the field is no army.’ ” 

A tall man walked past the entrance in the moonlight. 
The upper part of his face was hidden in the shadow of 
his cap. The left sleeve of his grey coat was empty and 
thrust into the pocket. He turned his face towards the 
two men and his teeth gleamed white. He passed on and 
his long footprints were left on the wet pavement. 

[ 405 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


“This is the fourth time that man has been past here,” 
the watchman remarked. 

In the distance a church clock struck two and a couple 
of cocks began to crow across the river, in the open fields. 

The watchman got a box of matches, struck one and, 
sucking violently at his pipe, lighted it and spat some two 
or three paces away. 

“I wonder where all these rascals come from.” he said. 
“As soon as they proclaimed freedom, no less than five 
thousand of them came into town. The porter from 
Luxe said to me: ‘In our hotel there are at least thirty 
burglars and they’ve taken the best rooms. They don’t 
go in for small things; robbing banks is their job.”’ . . . 
The militiaman sighed sympathetically and asked for a 
light. The man with one arm again appeared in the 
street. He was coming straight towards the watchman. 
They stared at him in silence. Suddenly the watchman 
whispered hurriedly: 

“It’s a bad lookout for us, Ivan. Give me the whistle.” 

The militiaman reached out for the whistle, but the 
man with one arm sprang at him with a single bound 
and knocked him in the chest with his foot. The militia¬ 
man rolled to the pavement. The watchman said quietly 
in a trembling voice: 

“Not so rough, Your Honour; we are only servants.” 

“Shut up!” said the man with one arm. At this mo¬ 
ment a long motor-car glided round the corner and six 
men sprang out of it, dressed in Hungarian tunics. Two 
of them stood on guard in the street, two others knocked 
down the watchman and militiaman without a word and 
twisted their arms behind them. Two others were rat¬ 
tling a key at the door. 

“Quieter, you dogs!” whispered the man with one arm. 

[406] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


The door opened softly and the one-armed man and 
two other burglars entered the shop. The whole business 
was done without any noise. A belated passer-by came 
along the other side of the street and, seeing a robbery 
going on, he tore away without a sound. In a little while 
the man with one arm and his two comrades came out of 
the shop carrying a black velvet bundle. 

“And what about them?” asked one of the robbers 
who had been guarding the bound watchman, turning to 
the man with one arm. 

“Liquidate.” 

One of the robbers took a pistol out of his pocket of 
his Hungarian tunic, admired the way it shone in the 
moonlight and went up to the prostrate watchmen. Two 
shots rang through the street. The car dashed away at 
full speed in the shadow of the acacias and disappeared 
round a corner. 


Elisaveta Kievna was walking up and down her room 
in the Hotel Luxe, smoking and listening and stopping 
now and then by the window. Over her thin chemise and 
lace petticoat she had thrown a costly coat. Dresses and 
underclothing were strewn about the room and the bed 
was not made. 

When she heard the sound of a motor-car, Elisaveta 
Kievna put her head out of the window, but she could 
not see anything. The wind sang through the telegraph 
wires and chilled her body through the coat. She shut 
the window with a bang and once more paced the room, 
smoking. Her face twitched. Some time passed and two 
shots were suddenly heard in the distance. Elisaveta 
Kievna dropped her cigarette and stood smiling in a help- 

[ 407 ] 



THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


less, pitiful way. No more shots followed. Her face re¬ 
laxed; the tension had passed. She raised her hands to 
her unkempt head, pressed it and lay 'down on her side 
on the bed. She did not stay there long, however. She 
soon jumped up and sat down on the sofa by the table, 
covered with a stained heavy tablecloth. First with her 
fingers and then with her teeth, she drew the cork from a 
bottle. She smiled and smoked and drank brandy from 
a tall wine glass with a corner of her mouth. 

Suddenly she shuddered so violently as to make the 
glasses on the table shake. There was a scratching on 
the door. She quickly jumped from the sofa and turned 
the key. In came Alexander Ivanovitch Jirov in a vel¬ 
veteen jacket and a big soft tie. His elongated head was 
sfiaven and his face was so pale as to be almost green. 
His wet lips smiled, exposing a rotten tooth at the side. 
Elisaveta Kievna returned to the sofa and sat down, 
curling her feet under her. She covered her bare shoul¬ 
ders and chest with the collar of her coat. 

“Have some brandy,” she said. Jirov sat down oppo¬ 
site her and filled a glass. His sunken eyes, black and 
lustreless, were fixed on Elisaveta Kievna’s face. 

“What do you think of it? Arkadi has killed two 
men,” he whispered. Elisaveta Kievna swallowed a lump 
in her throat and raised her brows. “I have just come 
from the place, Lisa. There is ever such a row and crowd 
at the shop. Muraveichik is in his pants, tearing his 
beard. The two watchmen have been killed, both struck 
at the back of the head.” Jirov’s lips trembled. Elisaveta 
pushed a glass towards him on the table. He filled it to 
overflowing, wetting his finger, and with a broad smile, 
he wiped it behind his ear. Elisaveta Kievna drained the 
glass. “Don’t you think it’s funny, Lisa? We had such 

[408 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


a jolly dinner today and talked and were excited and read' 
poetry and you were pleased and pretty and Arkadi was 
nice, and then, there are these two watchmen lying like 
sacks, with a black pool at the head of each. ... It 
took my nerve away, somehow. Don’t you feel it?” He 
took from his jacket pocket a silver box set with jewels, 
carefully opened the lid, took a pinch of some white pow¬ 
der and sniffed it. His eyes grew watery. “I often see 
a picture of a big, empty town. ... I am wandering 
through the streets; grass is growing between the paving 
stones. . . . Windows are bare. There is a wonderful 
sunset in the distance. I see this town in moments of 
melancholy. Only a solitary woman’s form in a street in 
the very heart. . . . And the woman is always you, Lisa.” 

. . . He leaned back his chair and sent a cloud of smoke 
to the crystal chandelier. “Of course, murder is the high¬ 
est manifestation of will. It is essential that murder 
should be followed by ecstasy, the joy of self-assertion. 
... If you only knew the kind of ideas that come to 
me, Lisa. . . . But to kill watchmen and keep awake all 
night and shudder with disgust, augh! Arkadi is clever 
and bold, but he is a thief all the same, who kills from 
round the corner.” . . . 

“I’ll chuck you out of the room!” Elisaveta Kievna 
exclaimed. “Don’t you dare say that!” She threw back 
her coat and half-naked as she was she leaned her elbows 
on the table and supported her cheeks on both the palms 
of her hands. “You are mere dirt; a crawling worm; I 
despise you.” . . . 

Jirov half closed his eyes with the enjoyment of it and 
drew his chair nearer to hers. “I am very fond of 
Arkadi, and think a lot of him,” he said in a throaty 
voice. “I am much indebted to him. . . . But he’s only 
practical. He has lost the guiding thread. ... Do you 

[ 409 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


remember our talks at the ‘Chateau Caberne’? He had 
pathos then. And now, in three months, twelve shops 
robbed and thirty men killed. He will end by going to 
Helsingfors and starting a bank.” . . . 

“Scoundrel, scoundrel,” Elisaveta Kievna said quietly, 
her face still resting on her hands. “He lives on our 
money, sniffs cocaine all day and is not satisfied.” . . . 

“No, it doesn’t satisfy me,” Jirow said brutally, and 
taking a ring with a sparkling stone from his little finger, 
he threw it into the coals. “You forget who I am!” He 
thrust away his chair and walked to the door. 

“Don’t go, Sasha,” Elisaveta Kievna said in a soft, 
almost pleading voice. 

He hesitated and came back and drank some brandy. 
He took a sniff from his little box and pulled back the 
blind from the window. “It is getting light,” he said. 
Elisaveta Kievna shook her head. “Now hear me care¬ 
fully,” Jirov said. “Arkadi must get us millions of 
money. The three of us will form a centre which we 
will call the Central Committee of the Planetary Revolu¬ 
tion. Socialism may go to the devil. He won’t have any¬ 
thing to do with it. We are pure anarchist-planetarians.” 
. . . Elisaveta Kievna lifted her head and looked at 
Jirov. Her short-sighted eyes sparkled. He continued, 
his elongated shaven head glistening beneath the crystal 
chandelier. “We must immediately establish a net of 
agents in all the cities of the world. You can give great 
help in this, Lisa. There is no one like you for finding 
people with an unquenchable thirst for crime. . . . We 
will begin by blowing up parliaments, palaces, arsenals. 
. . . Panic will follow and robberies and murders. . . . 
We will blow up stations and railway bridges and har¬ 
bours. . . . There will be chaos and self-destruction. . . . 

[ 410 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 

Then we will rule over the remaining part of humanity. 
... We will then come to the primary thing. We’ll 
drive millions of people to the equator and dig a big 
mine, many miles deep, and line it with steel and then 
we 11 fill it with dynamite and explode it. I am not rav- 
ing; it is quite a possible thing to do; I have discussed 
it with engineers. . . . The earth will be thrown from 
its orbit and like a rocket will shoot away from the 
damned mathematical curve and dash into the wilder¬ 
ness of space. . . . The cosmos will be shattered to 
pieces. The planets and stars will come out of their 
orbits. . . . There will be thunder in the heavens; worlds 
will crack like nuts. That will be a moment of divine 
ecstasy. . . . We will then fly to some sun and be 
consumed. . . . That is something to live for, Lisa. . . . ” 
“I can’t stand it any more!” Elisaveta Kievna ex¬ 
claimed, getting up from the sofa and groping about the 
room like one blind. “Don’t you all see that I am going 
mad? Talks like this from morning to night. . . . Rob¬ 
beries, murder, blood. ... I don’t want to destroy any¬ 
thing. ...” She cracked her fingers and placed them 
on her throat. “Sasha, you must dissuade Arkadi. We’ve 
got lots of money. Let us go away somewhere, the three 
of us. ... If only for one year. I can’t stand these sleep¬ 
less nights and the shooting. I was brushing Arkadi’s 
clothes the other day, you know, the ones he wore in 
Kiev, and I saw a blood-stain on the coat. . . . If we 
could only go away to some island, three thousand versts 
from land and lie on the sand. . . . But no, we shall 
drag ourselves about from town to town and rob and 
deceive each other until we are hanged, for which God 
be thanked. Go away, Sasha, I want to sleep. . . . 
Arkadi will be back late. . . . Go. I’ll spit in your face 
if you don’t. ...” 


[411 ] 


XL 


Katia remained alone. Teliegin and Dasha were mar¬ 
ried in the church of Nicolas on Hen’s Feet and went 
away to Petrograd that same day. Katia saw them off 
at the station, made the sign of the cross over them 
both and kissed them at parting, but they were both 
absent and dazed. Katia returned home at dusk. 

The house was empty. Marfusha and Liza had gone 
to a meeting for domestic servants “to pass a resolution 
of protest.” In the dining-room there was still a smell 
of flowers and cigarettes. In the middle of the table, 
among the dishes which had not been cleared away, 
there stood a flowering cherry tree in a pot. Katia 
watered it with the water in the water-jug, then she 
cleared the table and shook the crumbs from the table¬ 
cloth. She did not turn on the light, but sat down by 
the table facing the window. The cloudy sky without 
was getting dark; the roofs were barely visible. A clock 
in the room struck the hour; it would have struck in the 
same way had the heart been breathing with despair. 
Katia sat for a long time motionless, then she passed her 
hand over her eyes and got up. She took her down shawl 
from a chair and wrapping it round her shoulders, went 
into Dasha’s room. In the dim light she could see the 
striped mattress on the bare bed and an empty hat-box on 
the table. Bits of paper and stuff were strewn about 
the floor. When Katia saw that Dasha had taken all her 
little things without forgetting anything at all, she was 
horribly hurt. She sat down on the bed on the striped 
mattress and remained motionless as she had done in the 
dining-room. 

[ 412 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 

The dining-room clock struck ten with loud strokes. 
Katia rearranged the shawl on her shoulders and went 
into the kitchen. She stood there, listening, then on tip¬ 
toe, she reached down from a shelf the kitchen note¬ 
book, tore off a clean slip of paper and wrote in pencil. 

Liza and Marfusha, you ought to be ashamed to de¬ 
sert the house all day and to stay away so late.” The 
tears fell on the slip of paper. Katia put the note on the 
kitchen-table and went into her bedroom. She undressed 
quickly and got into bed, pulling her stockings off under 
the bedclothes, then she lay down, huddled her knees 
and grew calmer. 

At midnight the kitchen door banged. Liza and Mar¬ 
fusha stamped in, talking loudly. They went into the 
kitchen, were quiet for a moment and then both burst 
out laughing. They had read the note. Katia blinked, 
but did not move. After a while it grew quiet in the 
kitchen. 

The sleepless clock struck one loudly. Katia turned on 
her back. She kicked off the bedclothes, sighed several 
times with difficulty as though she wanted air and 
jumped out of bed. She turned on the electric light and 
walked over to a large standing mirror. Her thin chemise 
did not reach her knees. Katia anxiously and hurriedly 
examined herself as she would examine some one whom 
she knew well. Her chin trembled. She moved her face 
nearer to the glass and raised her hair on the right tem¬ 
ple. “Of course, there are. Here are some more. . . .” 
She examined every part of her face. “Of course, I 
shall be grey in a year and then old.” She turned out the 
light and got back into bed, covering her eyes with her 
elbow. “In all my life not a moment of joy. Every¬ 
thing is finished now. No one will ever put his arms 
about me and press me close, and say: ‘My dear, my dar¬ 
ling, my sweetheart, my love’! . . . ” 


[ 413 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


During these bitter reflections and regrets Katia 
suddenly recalled a wet gravel path in a meadow, dark 
blue from the rain and the big lime-trees. . . . Katia 
herself was walking down the path, in a brown dress 
and black apron. The gravel crunched beneath her 
shoes. Katia could feel how lissome she was and slen¬ 
der and sweet and the wind was blowing her hair. 
Beside her, not on the path but on the wet grass, walked 
Alesha, a schoolboy, wheeling a bicycle. Katia turns 
away so as not to laugh at him. Alesha is saying in a 
choking voice: “I know there is no hope of your re¬ 
turning my love. I only came to tell you, Katia, that 
I used once to want to go to the university to serve 
the people and education, now I laugh at these dreams. 
. . . It is all one and the same to me. I will end 

my life in some railway-station in the depths of the 
country. Good-bye.” He gets on his bicycle and 
rides away down the meadow, leaving a dark blue 
track behind him on the grass. His bent back in his 
grey jacket and his white cap are hidden by the green¬ 
ery. Katia cries: “Alesha, come back! I’ll change my 
mind perhaps and marry you!” She cannot say more, for 
she is laughing and shaking her head. . . . 

Had she really stood on that path with the summer 
wind which smelt of the rain blowing her apron about? 
Katia sat up in bed. She clutched her head and leaned her 
elbows on her bare knees. In her mind there rose the 
lights of lanterns, snowflakes, the wind howling through 
the bare trees, the whining, hopeless creaking of a sleigh, 
Bezsonov’s icy, feminine eyes near her own. . . . Pleas¬ 
ure, weakness, apathy. . . . The horrible thrill of curi¬ 
osity . . . God! Whom had she allowed to come near 
her then? 

Again Katia lay down. The stillness of the house 

[ 414 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


was broken by a sharp ring at the bell. Katia turned 
cold. The ring was repeated. Liza, breathing angrily 
in her broken sleep, shuffled barefoot along the pas¬ 
sage; the chain rattled at the front door and in a 
minute there was a knock at her bedroom door. “Madam, 
there is a telegram for you.” 

Katia’s brows contracted. She tore open the narrow 
envelope, unfolded the paper and darkness stood before 
her eyes. 

“Liza,” she said, looking at the girl, whose lips trem¬ 
bled with fright, “Nikolai Ivanovitch is dead.” 

Liza gave a cry and burst into tears. “Go,” Katia 
said to her. For a second time she read the horrible 
letters on the telegraph ribbon: “Nikolai Ivanovitch died 
from bad wounds received in gallant performance of his 
duty. The body will be brought to Moscow at the ex¬ 
pense of the Union.” 

Katia felt sick, the saliva rushed to her mouth, dark¬ 
ness swam at the corners of her eyes; she stretched 
herself on the pillows and lost consciousness. 


The next day Prince Kapustin-Unjesky called on 
Katia. He was a well-known public man of liberal 
views, the same ruddy-cheeked aristocrat who had 
spoken at the Law Club on the first day of the revo¬ 
lution. He took both her hands in his and pressed 
them against his rough waistcoat. He told her that 
he had come on behalf of the organization on which 
he had worked with the late Nikolai Ivanovitch and 
on behalf of the town of Moscow of which he was 
now assistant commissary, also on behalf of the revo- 

[ 415 ] 



THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


lution, to offer her his heartfelt sympathy at the un¬ 
timely death of her husband, who was such a gallant 
fighter for principle. 

Prince Kapustin-Unjesky was so naturally happy, 
healthy and cheerful, he seemed so frankly grieved, 
such a comfortable smell of cigars clung about his 
waistcoat that Katia felt relieved for a moment. She 
raised her sleepless, glistening eyes, parted her dry 
lips and said: 

“Thank you for what you 'say about Nikolai Ivano- 
vitch.” 

The Prince took out a big handkerchief and wiped 
his eyes. He had fulfilled a difficult duty and went 
away, his car roaring like a monster in the street. 
And Katia again began to wander about the room. 
She stopped by the photograph of the unknown general 
with the lion’s face; she took up an album, then a book, 
then a little box which had a heron painted on the 
lid with a frog in its mouth, and again she wandered 
about, examining the wall-paper, the blinds. “God! 
How tiresome it is to walk about, to look at things, 
to touch them !” she thought. She did not so much 
as taste her dinner; the very idea of food was revolt¬ 
ing to her. She commenced a short note to Dasha, but 
tore it up. Dasha could not be bothered with letters 
now. . . . She stared out of the window at the dim, 
white sky and whispered some curious lines, which 
for some unaccountable reason had come into her 
mind. “Homeless hands were pressed against my 
breast and dim eyes looked at me askance.” 

To lie down, to sleep. P>ut going to bed was like 
going into her coffin ; it was awful to contemplate after 
last night. . . . Hardest of all was her desperate pity 

{ 416 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


for Nikolai Ivanovitch. He was such a good, kind man, 
so practical. . . . She ought to have loved him as he was, 
but she did not love him, she tormented him. . . . Oh, 
God, oh, God! That was why he had gone grey so early. 
. . . Even his smile was kind and helpless. . . . 


The following day there was a requiem mass and 
twenty-four hours later the burial of what remained 
of Nikolai Ivanovitch. Beautiful speeches were made 
at the grave. The dead man was compared to an 
albatross perishing in an abyss, to a man who had 
brought a lighted torch into a forest filled with wild 
beasts. ... A well-known party politician arrived late 
at the funeral. He was a little man in spectacles, who 
looked like a reflection in a concave mirror at a wax- 
works show. “Now, Citizen, make way,” he said 
roughly to Katia, and pushed his way to the edge of 
the grave. In his speech he said that Nikolai Ivano- 
vitch’s death once again proved the justice of the 
agrarian policy pursued by his (the orator’s) party. 
The earth beneath his shabby boots crumbled and fell 
with a dull thud on the coffin. Katia felt a sickening 
spasm in her throat. Unperceived she got away from 
the crowd and went home. Her only desire was to 
wash and to sleep. When she entered the house, how¬ 
ever, a feeling of terror came over her. There were 
the striped wall-papers, the photographs, the little 
box with the heron, the crumpled table-cloth in the 
dining-room, the coffin draperies, the dirty windows. 
How awful and desolate! Katia ordered the bath to 
be turned on and she got into the warm water with a 
groan. Every part of her body was mortally tired. 

[4171 



THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


She could scarcely crawl to her own room and fell 
asleep without getting inside the bedclothes. In 
her sleep 'she could hear a bell ringing and the sound 
of footsteps and some one knocking at her door, but 
she made no reply. 

It was quite dark when Katia awoke. Her heart 
ached horribly. “What was it? What was it?” she 
asked in a scared, pitiful way. She sat up in bed, 
hoping for a moment that the terrible thing had 
happened in a dream. . . . For a moment, too, she felt 
a sense of injury and injustice. “Why did they not 
leave her in peace?” When quite awake she tidied her 
hair, slipped her bare feet into her slippers, thinking, 
clearly and calmly, “I can’t stand it any more.” 

Leisurely Katia took a lacquered box from a drawer. 
It was a travelling medicine chest and she examined 
the labels on the phials. She opened a little bottle of 
morphia and sniffed it and stood it aside and put the 
other bottles back in the box and the box in its place 
in the drawer. She went into the dining-room to fetch 
a wine glass, but noticed a light in the drawing-room 
door and stopped. “Is that you, Liza?” she asked, 
opening the door. On the sofa sat a tall man in a 
military tunic; his shaven head was bound with a 
piece of black stuff. He got up quickly. Katia’s 
knees shook; she turned cold; there was a hollow feel¬ 
ing beneath the heart. The man looked at her with 
his bright eyes, wide open and alarmed. His straight 
lips were compressed; the muscles stood out on his cheek¬ 
bones. It was Roshchin, Vadim Petrovitch. Katia put 
her hands on her breast. Roshchin did not take his eyes 
off her and said slowly and resolutely: 

“I called to pay my respects to you, but your servant 

[ 418 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


told me of the misfortune that has happened. I stayed 
because I had to tell you that you can command me 
even to death.” 

His voice trembled when he uttered the last words 
and his strong face flushed a brown red. Katia pressed 
her hands against her breast with all her force. Rosh- 
chin could see by her eyes that he must help her. 
When he drew near, Katia said, her teeth chattering, 
“Good evening, Vadim Petrovitch. . . 

Involuntarily he put out his arms to catch her; she 
seemed so frail and unhappy, a thing barely animate, 
but he instantly dropped them and frowned. His eyes 
grew moist. With her keen woman’s sense, Katia 
knew that he pitied her with that unique love, that 
wonderful light of life which had come long ago from 
the pierced hands outspread above the world. . . . Katia 
suddenly felt that, miserable and small and wicked and 
incapable as she was, with all her unshed tears and her 
miserable phial of morphia, she had become necessary 
and dear to the man, who was silently and solemnly 
waiting to take her to his heart. Restraining her tears, 
but not able to speak a word, Katia seized his hand 
and pressed her lips and face against it. 


[ 419 ] 


XLI 


“Look at that island and the cliffs and the bay! 
Isn’t the green water bottomless ? Look at those birds fly¬ 
ing above the bay; they look like people with wings.” . . . 

Dasha was resting her elbows on the window-sill 
and looking out of the window. Beyond the dark 
woods at the end of Kamennoostrovsky half the sky 
was ablaze with the setting sun. Miracles were hap¬ 
pening in the heavens. Behind Dasha sat Ivan Ilyitch. 
He was looking at her, motionless, though he could 
have moved as much as he pleased. Dasha would any¬ 
how not have vanished from the room with the dark 
blue curtains and the red reflection of the sunset on 
the wall above the embroidered cushions on the sofa. 

“Heavens, isn’t it sad and beautiful!” Dasha ex¬ 
claimed. “It is nice to be with you. . . . We seem to 
be floating in an airship. . . . Oh, Ivan, I promise to be 
economical in the housekeeping, but we must get a piano!” 

Ivan Ilyitch nodded in silent despair. He had bought 
all manner of kitchen pails, but had forgotten the most 
important thing, a piano. His attention, however, was 
immediately distracted by Dasha, who took her hands 
from the window-sill, threw herself in a chair and pulled 
down her skirt. 

“It is a long time since I played!” she said; “not since 
the war began. . . . Just think, the war is still going 
on, while we—— Well, you see what we are doing.” 

Dasha spoke the last words softly. She soon continued. 

“When the war is over, you and I must take up music 

[ 420 ] 



THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


seriously. And there is another thing, Ivan, I should 
like to live by the sea. Do you remember how we lay 
on the sand and the sea came up to us? What a pale 
blue sea it was, do you remember ? I seem to have 
loved you all my life, Ivan.” Ivan Ilyitch fidgeted 
again; he wanted to say something, but Dasha cried 
out, “The kettle must be boiling!” and ran away. 
She stopped in the doorway and looked around. In 
the dim light, Ivan Ilyitch could only make out her 
face, her hand on the curtain and an ankle in a grey 
stocking. Dasha vanished. Ivan Ilyitch caught his 
breath. He put his hands behind his head and shut his 
eyes. 

Dasha and Teliegin had arrived at two o’clock that 
very day. They had spent the whole of the night in 
the corridor of a crowded carriage sitting on their 
trunks. As soon as they arrived home, Dasha began 
to unpack. She peered into every corner, dusted, ad¬ 
mired the flat, decided to turn the drawing-room into 
the dining-room and Ivan Ilyitch’s room into the 
drawing-room and the dining-room into Ivan Ilyitch’s 
room, whereas for her own room, she decided to move 
some of the drawing-room furniture and to put in 
the drawing-room some of the furniture from Ivan 
Ilyitch’s room. And it all had to be done immediately. 
The porter was summoned from below and with Ivan 
Ilyitch’s help, he moved cupboards and sofas from 
room to room. When the rearrangement was com¬ 
pleted and the porter had departed, leaving a smell of 
Lenten pie behind him, Dasha asked Ivan Ilyitch to 
open all the windows, while she herself went to wash. 
She splashed about in the water for a long time, did 
something to her face and hair, would not allow Ivan 
Ilyitch to come first into one room, then into another, 

[ 421 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


while his only desire was to be with Dasha every mo¬ 
ment of the day and to look at her. At dusk Dasha 
felt more settled. Ivan Ilyitch washed and shaved 
and carefully dressed, went into the drawing-room and 
sat down near her. For the first time since they had 
become man and wife in the church of Nicolas on 
Hen’s Feet they were alone in the stillness. Dasha 
seemed to fear the stillness and did her best not to 
keep silent. She confessed afterwards to Ivan Ilyitch 
that she was afraid that he would suddenly say in a 
“rough” voice, not like his own, “Well, Dasha?” And 
Ivan Ilyitch was grieved that Dasha was so on her 
guard. 

Dasha had gone out to see to the kettle and Ivan Ilyitch 
sat with eyes closed. Every part of him seemed to 
feel Dasha’s presence and the charm of it. No matter 
what his mind rested on, the thing, as totally unim¬ 
portant, was banished, and with renewed force he felt 
that a being with a gentle voice and sweet face had 
settled in his house, a slender, lissome creature in a 
pretty, blue dress, his own wife. Ivan Ilyitch opened 
his eyes and listened to Dasha’s heels clattering about 
in the kitchen. Suddenly there was a crash, something 
broke, Dasha’s voice exclaimed plaintively, “A cup!” 
And instantly warm happiness filled Ivan Ilyitch’s 
heart. “When I wake tomorrow, it will not be an ordi¬ 
nary morning; Dasha will be there.” ... He got up to 
tell Dasha of his discovery, but she appeared in the door¬ 
way. “I have broken a cup . . . Ivan, do you really 
want some tea ?” 

“No, I don’t.” 

“I don’t want any either. . . . Why did I boil the 
kettle?” 

[ 422 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


She walked up to Ivan Ilyitch and as it was quite 
dark, she placed her hands on his shoulder. 

“What were you thinking of while I was gone?” 
she asked softly. 

“Of you.” 

“I knew it was of me. . . . What were you thinking 
of me?” 

Dasha’s uplifted face in the dusk seemed to be 
frowning, but it was smiling really. Her breast rose 
and fell evenly. Ivan Ilyitch found it hard to collect 
his thoughts. He puckered his brows honestly. “I 
was thinking of how disconnected it all was, you and 
that you were my wife. I realized it suddenly and 
wanted to come and tell you, but I forgot to.” 

“As for me, I find it quite connected,” Dasha said. 

“How?” 

“By my affection for you. I seemed to have wan¬ 
dered and wandered to come close to you like this. . . . 
And there is confidence besides. . . . Why do you find 
it disconnected? Do you imagine that I think of any¬ 
thing that you do not know?” 

“I see!” said Ivan Ilyitch joyfully. “It is so simple. 
. . . However, I don’t know what you do think about.” .. . 

“Dear, dear!” Dasha went over to the window. “Sit 
down here. I’ll sit at the side.” Ivan Ilyitch sat down 
on a chair and Dasha sat on the arm of it. “Ivan, dear, 
I have no secret thought; that is why I feel so at home 
with you, that is why I love you so.” 

“When you were in the kitchen,” Ivan Ilyitch said, 
“I was thinking that a wonderful being had settled in 
my house. Was that wrong?” 

“It was,” Dasha said pensively. “It was very wrong. 
I am your wife and a being is some strange person.” 

[423 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


“Do you love me, Dasha?” 

“Oh!” Dasha threw up her head. “I shall love you 
to the very birch tree.” 

“What birch tree?” 

“Don’t you know? At the end of every person’s 
life is a little mound and above it a drooping birch 
tree.” 

Ivan Ilyitch put his arms round Dasha’s shoulders. 
Gently she allowed him to draw her to himself. And 
just as long ago at the sea, their kiss was a long one; 
they had to stop for breath. 

“Oh, Ivan!” Dasha said, and put her arms around 
his neck. His heart beat so violently that she pitied 
him,. She sighed and getting up, said gently and simply: 

“Come, Ivan.” 


Five days after her arrival, Dasha received a letter 
from her sister, informing her of Ivan Nikolai Ivano- 
vitch’s death. Katia wrote: “I have been through a 
period of misery and despair. I realized clearly that 
I was forever alone. It was terrible! Every law, 
human and divine, is broken when one is alone. In 
my grief and despair my soul was consumed as in a 
fire. I wanted to escape from these torments—an icy, 
invisible hand propelled me to that course. I was 
saved by a miracle, the glance of a man’s eyes. Oh, 
Dasha, Dasha, we live through long years for a moment 
perhaps, to look into a man’s eyes, into the depths of 
love. . . . Dead ghosts as we are, we drink this water 
of life, our blind eyes are opened, we see God’s light, 
we hear the voices of love. Love, love ... I bless the 
man who taught me the words.” The news of her 

[424 ] 



THE ROAD TO CALVARY 

brother-in-law’s death and Katia’s distracted letter 
were a great shock to Dasha. She immediately pre¬ 
pared to go to Moscow, but a second letter arrived 
from Katia the next day. She wrote to say that she 
was packing to come to Petrograd and asked Dasha 
to find her a cheap room. In a postscript she said: 
“Vadim Petrovitch is going to call on you. He will 
tell you everything about me. He is like a brother 
and father to me; he is the best friend of my life.” 


i 

Dasha and Teliegin were walking slowly down the 
avenue. It was a Sunday in April. Above the trans¬ 
parent green tracery of leaves, in the cool blue spring 
sky, fragments of fleecy clouds flew, broken by the 
wind and dissolved by the sun. The sunlight pene¬ 
trated to the avenue as through water and crept in 
round shadows on the gravel, on Dasha’s white dress, 
on Teliegin’s green army shirt. Moss-clad trunks of 
limes and the dry ruddy poles of firs came towards 
them, with their murmuring tops and their rustling 
leaves. Dasha listened to a thrush calling in the dis¬ 
tance ; it sang in a watery voice on two notes. Dasha 
looked at Ivan Ilyitch. He had taken off his cap and 
was squinting with a smile. She had a sense of peace 
and completion. She felt the charm of the day, the 
joy of breathing, the lightness with which she walked, 
so in tune was she to the day, to the man she loved, who 
walked beside her. 

“Ivan,” Dasha said, turning to him with a smile. 

“Yes, Dasha?” he asked, smiling, too. 

“Never mind . . . I’ve changed my mind.” 

“What about?” 


[425 ] 



THE ROAD TO CALVARY 

“I will tell you later.” 

“I know what it is.” 

Dasha’s forehead puckered in alarm; her lips parted. 
“I am sure you don’t.” . . . 

They came to a tall pine. Ivan Ilyitch brushed away 
the pieces of peeled bark, covered with soft drops of 
resin. He broke them in his fingers and looked at 
Dasha affectionately from beneath his brows. 

“There is only one blessing on earth for our love, 
Dashenka, and ...” 

Dasha’s hand trembled. “You see,” she whsipered, 
“I feel as if I were coming into some greater happiness 
... so much do I love, so full am I.” . . . 

Ivan Ilyitch shook his head in silence. They came 
out on a meadow covered with fresh green grass and 
yellow buttercups swaying in the wind. The wind, 
which drove the fragments of scattered clouds along 
the sky, caught Dasha’s dress. As she walked, she 
bent down now and then to pull down her skirt, say¬ 
ing, “Heavens, what a wind!” 

When they crossed the meadow, from the shade of 
a tree, where several soldiers were lying, one man 
rose up, hatless, with torn collar and loose shirt. He 
came towards them in his heavy boots in a staggering, 
impudent gait. 

“Stop!” he cried, waving a limp hand before his 
face, as though to drive away a fly. 

Ivan Ilyitch stopped; his chin protruded, a vein stood 
out on his forehead. Dasha clutched his arm and whis¬ 
pered : “Please don’t spoil my day! Don’t take any notice 
of him; he is drunk!” 

“What do you want?” Ivan Ilyitch asked calmly and 
coolly. The man stood still. His whitish, drunken eyes 
were fixed on Teliegin. 

[426 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 

Taking the air, officer ?” he asked with less assur¬ 
ance. Dasha dug her finger-nails below Ivan Ilyitch’s 
elbow. He gave a smile with the corner of his mouth 
to let her see that he understood. “Wffiat do you 
want ? he repeated. The soldier shut his eyes and 
opened them immediately. A smile spread over his 
broad face with the thin, dirty moustache. 

“I saw some nice people coming along and thought 
I’d like to say how do you do to them.” 

“That’s a lie,” Teliegin said. “The other fellows 
egged you on to come; I heard you all laughing.” 

“It is true; they did egg me on,” the soldier said 
with a laugh. He was evidently not so drunk as he 
had at first sight appeared. 

“It’s so dull, Your Honour. You keep on nibbling 
seeds; you swallow them with the flies and the midges 
and you are bored the whole day. I am sorry I dis¬ 
turbed you; it is pleasant to talk to decent people, 
but you have your own affairs; continue your walk. 

. . . We’ve been lying on our bellies since seven this 
morning. . . . Those big-jawed fellows said, ‘Go on, 
Stepan, scare them.’ ...” He looked amiably at Dasha. 
She laughed and took Ivan Ilyitch’s cigarette-case out 
of his pocket and offered it to the man. He took a 
cigarette and put it behind his ear. “It’s a stern hus¬ 
band you’ve got ... I am sorry I troubled you ... I 
wish you a pleasant walk.” 

After the encounter Ivan Ilyitch walked along 
frowning. He listened absently to Dasha’s words. At 
last he slapped his thigh in annoyance. “Three months 
ago that fellow would have been shot for a trick like 
that; he knows that well. What made him come up 
to me, do you think? It was to spit on my shoulder- 

[4271 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


straps. What matters it to him what price I paid to 
get them ? I am an officer and consequently an enemy.” 

“He did not hurt us, Ivan.” 

“Let him but have tried to hurt you! He wouldn’t 
have dared!” 

“I don’t think it was that,” Dasha said, “but when 
he came up and saw us . . .” 

“Saw us, indeed! You don’t know the kind of men 
they are. They are terrible.” 

“Why do you hate them so?” 

“I hate”—Ivan Ilyitch stopped. “I don’t hate them. 
I know them well. Every soldier, whether he come 
from the peasants or the workers, has a charge of 
dynamite in him—hatred. It doesn’t mean that he 
hates you, not a bit of it. He is kind and civil and 
obliging. If you were to get ill, he would take the 
greatest possible care of you, and, and there wouldn’t be 
any pretence about it either. It would be done from 
the heart. They are a sterling, lovable people. I 
knew of orderlies who pulled out their officers from 
under the deadliest fire. Their dynamite is contained 
in a kind of capsule. If it bursts, the soldier is no 
longer like a man, he is a wild beast. You say I hate 
them. I fear them. The whole of the front is in 
their hands and the fate of the country. What is the 
front to them? What is Russia to them? To be spat 
upon like these shoulder-straps. There now, take 
that for everything!” . . . 

“You are not altogether just,” Dasha said tenta¬ 
tively. “If they hate us, we must have been to blame 
somewhere. . . . Don’t argue, now.” . . . Dasha took 
Ivan Ilyitch firmly by the arm and looked up in his 
face as she walked along. “Wasn’t it wrong to live 

[ 428 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


the way we lived before? Katia called it spending 
‘sparrow’ nights. Have you ever seen a ‘sparrow’ 
night ? It is a dark, dark night, hot and still and starry 
and heat-lightning is playing silently about the sky. 
That is how we lived. We played about senselessly. 
. . . Do you know, Ivan ...” 

Dasha suddenly blushed and turned away. They 
had come out on to the road, along which stretched the 
palace railings with golden spikes, dull with age. 
Dasha felt a stone in her shoe and stopped. Ivan II- 
yitch sat down and took Dasha’s shoe from her warm 
foot in a white stocking and kissed it below the in¬ 
step near the toes. Dasha rested her foot against her 
knee, put on her shoe and said, “I want to have a 
child by you.” . . . 

She had at last spoken the words which she had 
been wanting to say during the whole of their walk. 
She turned hot and fanned her face with her hand. 
She looked through the railings, where on a lawn, two 
men were digging a long black bed in the soft green 
grass. One of them was an old man in a neat white 
apron. He placed his foot on the spade leisurely and 
giving it a push with bent knee, he threw up the 
purple earth. The other was a man in an army shirt, 
gathered at the back. He wore a broad-brimmed cap 
with the peak pulled over his eyes. He was working 
hurriedly, evidently not used to it. He bent down and 
took out a handkerchief from the pocket of his 
breeches tucked into his boots and drove away the 
flies that were sticking to his face. 

“Look now, he doesn’t mind it!” a sneering voice 
said. Teliegin turned and saw standing beside him a 
blinking old man in a new cap and warm waistcoat 

[ 429 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


over an embroidered shirt. The man gave a nod in 
the direction of the two men digging. “Transplant¬ 
ing cabbages from a loam bed. There’s work for you, 
now! . . . Funny!” . . . The man laughed merrily. 
Dasha turned to him in astonishment. She took Ivan 
Ilyitch’s arm and they walked away from the railings. 
At this moment, the man in the army shirt turned on 
hearing the laughter, with his foot resting on the 
spade. His cheeks were sunken and dark with bags 
under the eyes. With a gesture familiar to the whole 
of Russia, he passed the hollow of his left hand over 
his big red moustache. 

The man outside the railings took off his cap and 
bowed to the former Emperor with a crooked smile. 
He shook his long hair and pulling his cap low over 
his eyes, went on his way, his beard in the air, treading 
noisily with his new boots. 


[ 430 ] 


XLII 


Ekaterina Dmitrievna settled near Dasha in a little 
wooden house with a small garden belonging to two 
old ladies. One of them, Klavdia Ivanovna, had, at 
one time, been a singer, the other, Sophia Ivanovna, 
was a kind of attendant and friend. In the morning 
Klavdia Ivanovna would paint her eyebrows, put on 
a raven-black wig and sit down to patience. Sophia 
Ivanovna looked after the house and when angry 
would speak in a masculine voice. The house was 
clean and overcrowded in the old-fashioned way with 
numerous table-cloths and screens and faded por¬ 
traits of by-gone days. In the morning the rooms 
smelt of good coffee, but when dinner was being 
cooked, Klavdia Ivanovna complained of the smell of 
the food and sniffed her smelling salts, while Sophia 
Ivanovna would call in a deep voice from the kitchen: 
‘‘What can I do with the smell? You can’t fry potatoes 
with patchouli scent!” In the evening the paraffin-oil 
lamps with full globes would be lighted. The old women 
were solicitous in their care of Katia, notwithstanding 
that Klavdia Ivanovna held there was something 
demoniacal in every young woman. Katia lived 
quietly in that old-world retreat untouched by time. 
She got up early in the morning, swept and dusted her 
own room and seated herself at the window to mend 
underclothes or darn stockings, or to alter one of her 
old smart dresses into one of a simpler style. (She 
had not bought or made anything since the Paris days 

[431 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


and money was very scarce now.) After breakfast 
Katia would go for a walk on the island, taking a book 
with her or some embroidery. She would go to a 
favourite spot and sit down on a seat near a pond and 
watch the children playing on a sand heap, or the car¬ 
riages, sparkling in the sun, rolling by through the 
tree trunks. She would read and embroider and 
think. At six o’clock she would go to Dasha’s for 
dinner. At eleven Dasha and Teliegin would see her 
home, when the sisters walked arm and arm in front, 
while Teliegin walked behind, whistling, “covering the 
rear,” for it was now not altogether safe to walk at 
night in the street. 

Every day Katia wrote to Vadim Petrovitch Rosh- 
chin, who was away at the front. With great care she 
honestly set down everything that had happened dur¬ 
ing the day and all that she had been thinking about. 
Roshchin had requested her to do this and in his 
replies expressed his gratitude. “When you write me, 
Ekaterina Dmitrievna, that you are miserable because 
a dress you had counted on altering was coming to 
pieces, or that when you crossed the Elagin Bridge it 
commenced to rain and you took shelter under the trees 
because you had no umbrella, and that while you were 
waiting you decided to give Daria Dmitrievna a white 
sunshade with cherries on it for a birthday present, 
it gives me great pleasure. . . . All these trifles are 
dear to me; I feel that I could not live without these 
trifles in your life.” . . . 

A remote corner of Katia’s brain was conscious that 
Roshchin exaggerated; he could very well have lived 
without her trifles, but the idea of being alone by her¬ 
self for a single day, was so alarming that Katia tried 

[ 432 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


not to question, but to believe that everything in her 
life was necessary and dear to Vadim Petrovitch. In 
consequence whatever she did assumed a special sig¬ 
nificance. “I lost my thimble and looked for it for a 
whole hour and then found it on my finger.” Vadim 
Petrovitch, no doubt, would laugh at her having be¬ 
come so stupid. 

Katia’s attitude to herself was as to something that 
did not wholly belong to her. One day as she sat 
working and thinking at the window, she noticed that 
her fingers trembled. She raised her head and stuck 
her needle into her skirt on the knee and sat looking 
before her for a long time. Her gaze fell on a cup¬ 
board mirror and she caught sight of a frail face with 
large, sad eyes and hair dressed simply in a knot at 
the back; it was a sweet, gentle face.. . . “Is that really 
my face?” Katia thought. She went on with her sew¬ 
ing, but her heart beat fast. She pricked her finger 
and put it in her mouth and once again looked at the 
glass, but this time she could see herself and she was 
not so nice as the other person. . . . That evening she 
wrote to Vadim Petrovitch: “I was thinking of you 
the whole day. I miss you very much, my friend. 
I sit at the window and wait. Something is tak¬ 
ing place within me, some long-forgotten girlish 
moods.” . . . 

Even Dasha, who was absent and absorbed in her 
complex (according to her view) and unique relation 
to Ivan Ilyitch, could not help noticing a change in 
Katia and one evening, at tea, when she had been argu¬ 
ing the question for a long time said, “Katia must 
always wear plain, black dresses with deep collars. 
You can’t see yourself,” she said, striking her chest 
with the tips of three fingers, “but I assure you that you 

[ 433 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


look about nineteen. . . . She looks younger than I, 
Ivan, doesn’t she?” 

“Yes . . . that is, not quite, but . . 

“Oh, you don’t understand anything!” Dasha said. 
“Now look here, please, you are a man. There is no 
virtue in being young when a woman is really nine¬ 
teen. ... A woman’s youthfulness does not depend on 
her age, it depends on quite other things; age has 
nothing to do with it.” . . . 


The small amount of money left to Katia on Nikolai 
Ivanovitch’s death had come to an end. Teliegin ad¬ 
vised her to sell up her old flat on the Znamenskaya, 
which had been standing empty since March. Any¬ 
how, it was a sensible thing to do. Katia agreed and 
'she and Dasha went to the flat to collect a few things 
she valued for old association’s sake. 

When she got up to the second floor and saw the 
familiar oak door with the brass plate bearing “N. I. 
Smokovnikov,” she felt as if a cycle of life had been 
completed. The old porter, who, muffled and grum¬ 
bling at being disturbed in his sleep, would come to 
open the door for her at midnight and turn out the 
light before she had time to get upstairs, unlocked 
the door and took off his cap. He allowed Katia and 
Dasha to walk in first and said to comfort them: 

“You may be sure, Ekaterina Dmitrievna, that a 
crumb has not been lost. I kept an eye on the tenants 
day and night. They lost a son in France or they 
would have been here now. They liked the flat very 
much.” . . . 

[ 434 ] 



THE ROAD TO CALVARY 

The hall was damp and smelt as if it had not been 
lived in for some time; the blinds in all the rooms 
were drawn. Katia went into the dining-room and 
turned on the switch. The crystal chandelier blazed 
out brightly above the table covered with grey cloth, 
in the middle of which, just as of old, there stood a 
porcelain flower-basket; but the sprig of mimosa in 
it had long been withered. The high-backed, leather- 
seated chairs—indifferent spectators of by-gone 
gaiety—were ranged along the walls. One panel of 
the carved side-board as big as an organ stood open, 
exposing the up-turned champagne glasses. On the 
Venetian oval mirror, covered with dust, the golden 
boy slept on top, just as before, his hand stretched 
out to the scroll of the frame. 

Katia was standing motionless by the door. “My 
God!” she said softly. “Do you remember, Dasha? 
No one here now!” 

She went into the drawing-room and turned on the 
big chandelier. She looked around and shrugged her 
shoulders. The cubist and futurist pictures, which at 
one time had seemed so brazen and difficult to under¬ 
stand, now looked pitiful and faded and seemed like 
so much discarded clothing after a carnival. 

“Do you remember, Katia ?” asked Dasha, indicat¬ 
ing the bow-legged Venus holding a flower in her yel¬ 
low corner; “I used to imagine she was the cause of 
all our misfortunes; I had a superstitious horror of her.” 

Dasha laughed and began to sort out the music. 
Katia went into her old bedroom. It was just as it 
had been left three years ago, when, in her travelling 
dress and veil, she had run in to take her forgotten 
gloves from her dressing-table and had turned to look 
back when going out. 


[ 435 ] 


THE ROAD TO CAE VARY 


Now everything seemed dull and of smaller propor¬ 
tions than formerly. Katia opened a cupboard full of 
little bits of lace and silk and stuff and shoes and 
stockings. They had all seemed so essential at the 
time; a faint odour of perfume still clung about them. 
Aimlessly Katia began to sort them out. Some mem¬ 
ory of the life gone by forever clung to every little 
thing. 

The stillness of the house was suddenly broken and 
filled with clear, majestic sounds of music. It was 
Dasha playing the sonata she used to practise three 
years ago when preparing for her examination. Katia 
shut the cupboard door and went back to the drawing¬ 
room, where she sat down near her sister. 

“Isn’t it splendid, Katia?” Dasha said, half turning 
round. “Just listen to this passage. It is like a voice 
thundering throughout the universe: Live all of you for 
My sake.” . . . 

Dasha played a few more bars, then took up an¬ 
other book. 

“Come, Dasha,” Katia said, “my head aches.” 

“But how about the things?” 

“I don’t want anything from here; I’ll only have the 
piano moved to my place; as for the rest, they can 


Katia had come to dinner, excited by her quick 
walk, happy and in a new black straw hat and blue 
veil. “Just in time,” she said, touching Dasha’s cheek 
with her warm lips. “I’ve got my feet wet though. 
Let me change.” She took off her gloves and went 

[ 436 ] 



THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


over to the window. The rain, which had been trying 
to come down several times that day, now poured 
down, whirled about by the wind and streaming down 
the gutters. Far down below umbrellas hurried past. 
The dark air outside the window flashed with a white 
light and immediately there was a thunder-clap that 
made Dasha cross herself. 

“Do you know who is coming to see us this eve¬ 
ning?” Katia asked, her lips puckering into a smile. 

“Who?” said Dasha, but that moment there was a ring 
in the hall and Dasha rushed out to open the door. 
Ivan Ilyitch’s jolly laugh was heard in the hall and his 
feet scraping on the mat, then he and Dasha went 
into the bedroom, talking and laughing the while. 
Katia took off her gloves and hat; she took a comb 
from the back of her head and tidied her hair, while a 
gentle, enigmatical smile played about her lips. 

At dinner, Ivan Ilyitch, rosy-cheeked and happy, 
changed into dry clothes, related the happenings of 
the day. At the Obukhovsky works, as in all other 
works and factories, the workers had gone mad. They 
first declared that they would work eight hours, then 
seven, then six. The soviets invariably supported these 
demands. Private enterprises were beginning to close 
down and the government factories were working at 
a loss. Profits, however, were not to be thought of now 
with the war and revolution. There had been another 
meeting at the works that day at which the Bolshe¬ 
vists had spoken and one and all had echoed in chorus, 
no compromise with the bourgeois government, no 
agreement with the employers; all power to the 
soviets who will introduce order. . . . 

“I got up to speak, but it was no use; they pulled 
me off the platform.” Ivan Ilyitch snapped off the 

[ 437 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


stalk of a radish, dipped it in salt and crunched it be¬ 
tween his teeth. “It’s a problem, I can tell you. 
‘Comrades/ I said to them, ‘if you turn everything 
upside down, the factories will close down because 
they can't work at a loss whether they belong to you 
or to the employers. The government in that case 
will have to feed the unemployed. As you want to 
be in the government—in the soviets—you will have 
to feed yourselves, and if you do not produce any¬ 
thing, you will have to obtain money and bread from 
outside, that is, from the peasants. As you cannot 
give the peasants anything for their money' or their 
bread, you will have to take it from them by force, 
hvhich means war. But there are fifteen times the 
number of peasants that there are of you and they 
will have bread and you none. ... It will end by the 
peasants conquering you and they will take the ma¬ 
chinery from the factories and sell it and you will 
have to go begging for a bit of work in Christ's name, 
but there won’t be any one to give it to you.' ... I 
painted them such a picture, Dasha, that I was amused 
at it myself. You should have heard the row they 
kicked up! ‘Hireling!’ shouted the Bolshevists. ‘Com¬ 
rades, don’t be influenced by his provocation. Millions of 
workers the world over are anxiously waiting your 
triumph over the hateful system. . . . Capitalism must 
be wiped off the face of the earth/ ... I can't blame 
our workers, Dasha, when men are shouting at them, 
‘Down with individual interest! down with reason! 
down with slave work! your country is the universe, 
your aim, the conquest of happiness for all workers; 
you are not men of the Obukhovsky works, you arc 
the vanguard of the world revolution.* . . . Vaska 
Rublev's eyes were glinting like a beast's. . . . They 

[ 438 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


wouldn’t let me finish; Vaska pulled me off the plat¬ 
form. . . . ‘I know you are not an enemy,’ he said to 
me, ‘then why do you talk like that? You had bet¬ 
ter hold your peace; we can manage without you.’ . . . 
When we were all going out afterwards, I said to 
him: ‘You are a clever fellow, Vaska. How is it you 
don’t see that the Bolshevists don’t care a hang for 
you? All they want is to climb to power on your neck!’ 
‘And I can see, Comrade Teliegin,’ he replied, ‘the whole 
of the land and the factories belonging to the workers by 
the New Year. There won’t be a single bourgeois left in 
our republic; we won’t let them breed. . . . And there 
won’t be any money. . . . People will work and live, 
everything will be theirs. ... I was promised that that 
is what will happen by the New Year!’ ”... 

Ivan Ilyitch would have laughed, but he shook his 
head and began to scrape together the crumbs on the 
table-cloth with his fingers. Dasha smothered a sigh. 
Katia said after a pause: 

“I am certain we have great trials in front of us.” 

“Yes,” Ivan Ilyitch said, “and the war is not over, 
that is the worst of it. Everything is going to pieces. 
There is no backbone. The workers think that the 
soviets are the backbone.”. . . 

Dasha brought the coffee in a china coffee-pot and 
poured a cup out for her husband first. She then took 
a brush and scoop and went round the table to sweep 
off the crumbs. When she got to Ivan Ilyitch she put 
down the brush and scoop quickly and pressed close to 
her husband with her face on his breast. 

“There, there, Dasha, don’t be alarmed,” Ivan Il¬ 
yitch said, patting her hair. “Nothing terrible has hap¬ 
pened yet; we have been in tighter corners. . . . Now 

[ 439 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


listen to this: I remember when we came to Rotten 
Lime . . 

He began to relate some of his army hardships. 
Katia looked at the clock on the wall and went out of 
the dining-room. Dasha looked at her husband’s 
strong face with the gleaming teeth and laughing eyes 
and felt reassured somewhat; she had nothing to fear 
with a man like him. When she had heard the story 
of Rotten Lime, she wiped her eyes with her table- 
napkin and went into her bedroom to powder her face. 
She found Katia sitting by the dressing-table mirror 
doing something to her face. 

“Dasha/’ she said in a thin voice, “you haven’t any 
more of that scent left; you know, the warm kind.” 

Dasha sat down opposite her sister and stared at 
her in the greatest astonishment. 

“Katia, are you ‘cleaning your wings’ ?” 

Katia blushed and threw back her head with a 
smile. 

“What is the matter with you today, Katia?” 

“I have been trying to tell you, but you wouldn’t 
listen to me,” she said. “Vadim Petrovitch is arriving 
this evening by an army train and he is coming to 
us straight from the station. ... I couldn’t ask him 
to my place, it’s too late.” . . . 


At half past nine there was a ring and Katia, Dasha 
and Teliegin rushed out into the hall. Teliegin opened 
the door and Roshchin came in. He was in a crumpled 
coat thrown over his shoulders and a cap drawn low 
over his face. His haggard, solemn, sun-burnt face 

[ 440 ] 



THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


softened into a smile when he saw Katia. She was 
looking at him, confused and happy. When he had 
thrown his coat and cap on a chair and greeted them, 
saying, “I am sorry to have dropped on you so late, 
but I wanted to see you tonight, Ekaterina Dmitrievna, 
and you, Daria Dmitrievna,” Katia’s eyes, lighted up. 

“I am glad you have come, Vadim Petrovitch,” she 
said, and when he bent over her hand, she kissed him 
on the temple, her lips quivering with a smile. 

“It’s a pity you didn’t bring your things,” said Ivan 
Ilyitch, “because we’ll make you stay the night just 
the same.” . . . 

“We can put him in the drawing-room on the Turk¬ 
ish divan and if it’s too short, he can put a chair against 
it,” Dasha said. “Of course, he must stay with us, 
mustn’t he, Ivan?” 

As in a dream Roshchin listened to what these kind, 
elegant people were saying to him. He was all on 
edge after the sleepless night of his journey, hanging 
out of carriage windows for food, struggling perpetu¬ 
ally for the few inches of space in the carriage, with 
coarse oaths ringing in his ears. It was still strange 
to him to see the three of them, incredibly beautiful 
and clean and perfumed, standing on the sparkling 
parquet floor in the brilliantly lighted hall, pleased that 
he, Roshchin, had come. As in a dream he could see 
Katia’s beautiful grey eyes saying, I am glad, glad, 
glad. . . . He pulled his belt straight, stood erect and 
gave a deep sigh. 

“Thank you,” he said. “Where am I to go?” 

They led him into the dining-room and gave him 
some food. Without noticing what it was, he ate 
everything that was put before him; he was soon satis- 

[441 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


fied and pushed away his plate. He lighted a cigarette. 
His thin, grave, clean-shaven face, which had alarmed 
Katia when she had first seen it in the hall, was now 
softened and looked more tired. His big hands, with 
the light of the orange shade falling on them, trembled 
as he lighted a match. Katia was sitting in the shadow 
of the lamp-shade, watching Vadim Petrovitch eager¬ 
ly. She felt that she loved every little hair on his 
hands, every button on his dark brown leather tunic, 
crumpled from lying in his suit-case. She noticed, 
too, that he clenched his jaws as he talked and spoke 
through his teeth. His sentences were short and 
muddled. He evidently felt this himself and tried 
to control some anger that had been raging in him 
for a long time. . . . Dasha exchanged glances with 
her sister and her husband and suggested to Roshchin 
that if he were tired, he might perhaps like to go to 
bed. 

He sat straight up in his chair and burst out unex¬ 
pectedly : “Really, I did not come back for the purpose 
of going to sleep. . . . Oh, no.” . . . 

He went out on the balcony and stood under the 
fine rain. Dasha gave a motion of the eyes towards 
the balcony and shook her head. Roshchin said from 
the balcony: 

“I am sorry, Daria Dmitrievna. . . . This is the re¬ 
sult of four nights of lost sleep.” . . . 

He came back, smoothing his hair on the top of his 
head and sat down in his place. 

“I have come straight from the staff,” he said, “and 
am bringing very uncomfortable news to the War 
Minister. . . . When I first saw you all a mortal pain 
came over me. ... I must tell you everything. There 

[ 442 ] 


i 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


is no one dearer to me in the world than you are, Eka¬ 
terina Dmitrievna.” Katia turned pale. Ivan Ilyitch 
put his hands behind his back and Dasha, from her 
place by the wall, looked at Roshchin with eyes full of 
horror. “If a miracle does not happen,” he said with 
a cough, “we are lost. The army does not exist any 
more. . . . The front is in flight. . . . The soldiers 
are fleeing on the roofs of the trains. It is beyond 
human power to stay the disintegration on the front. 
... It is like trying to stay the ebb of the ocean. 
You can control the fear of death in a soldier—I have 
myself turned back half a company to the attack with 
nothing more than a stick, but now the Russian sol¬ 
dier has lost the sense of what he is fighting for. He 
has lost respect for the war, respect for everything 
connected wtih the war, the government, the country, 
Russia. . . . The soldier is convinced that we have 
only to cry ‘Peace’ and the war will stop the same day. 
. . . And it is only we who won’t make peace. You 
see, the soldier despises the place where he has been de¬ 
ceived for three years. He has thrown down his rifle and 
you can’t make him fight any more. . . . When the 
whole ten millions of them rush away in the au¬ 
tumn ...” 

“But we can’t stop the war! We can’t open the 
front with a hundred and seventy-five German divisions 
there!” said Ivan Ilyitch, restraining a tremor in his 
voice. A cold obstinacy appeared in his bright eyes, 
an expression Dasha knew so well and which always 
alarmed her so. “I can’t understand the way you 
talk, Vadim Petrovitch.” . . . 

“I am bringing a plan to the War Minister % but I 
have no hope that it will be approved,” Roshchin 
said. “This is the plan: we must declare a complete 

[ 448 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 

demobilization at the earliest possible moment; that 
is, we must organize the flight. By that means we 
can save the railways, the artillery and stores of 
shells and provisions. We must tell the allies definitely 
that we are not going out of the war. At the same 
time, in the Volga basin, we must put a defence force 
of trusted units which can still be found. Along the 
Volga we must commence the formation of a new 
army, the mainstay of which must be voluntary units. 
We must support and form partisan detachments. . . . 
Depending on the factories in the Urals and coal and 
corn from Siberia, we must begin the war afresh. . . . 
There is no other issue. We must understand the 
nature of the times. The Russian people have no 
more reason or will; they are acting from the darkest 
recesses of their aroused instinct of a man of the soil. 
That instinct is to plough and to sow. Russia will be 
a state of ploughmen. . . . The land will be ploughed 
beautifully. . . . Let them begin it as soon as may 
be-” 

“Open the front to the enemy? Give up our country 
to the savage hordes ? No, Vadim Petrovitch; a good 
many people will not agree to that! ,, 

“We have no country now,” said Roshchin. “There 
was a place which used to be our country”—he 
clenched his fists on the table so violently that the 
fingers turned blue—“but Great Russia ceased to exist 
the moment the people laid down their arms. You 
may not want to realize it but there it is. . . . Can St. 
Nicholas help you? People have forgotten to pray to 
him. Great Russia is now manure beneath the plough. 
. . . We must begin everything afresh, the formation 
of troops, the state; we must squeeze a different soul 


[ 444 ] 



THE ROAD TO CALVARY 

into ourselves. The Russian people are no more; there 
are inhabitants, folks like me.” . . . 

He struck his breast, dropped his head into his 
hands on the table and burst into smothered sobs. 


Katia did not go home that night. She and Dasha 
slept in the same bed, while Ivan Ilyitch had a bed 
hastily improvised in the study. After the painful 
scene Roshchin had gone out on the balcony, where he 
got soaked, and coming back into the dining-room, 
asked to be excused. The most sensible thing to do 
was to go to bed. He had barely time to undress 
when he fell asleep. When Ivan Ilyitch went in on 
tiptoe to turn out his light, Roshchin was sleeping on 
his back, his big hands clasped on his chest. His thin 
face with the eyes tightly shut and the wrinkles, which 
showed sharply in the morning light, were like those 
of a man who was controlling pain. Ivan Ilyitch bent 
over him and made the isgn of the cross. Roshchin 
did not wake; he sighed and turned over on his right 
side. 

Katia and Dasha, lying under one blanket, talked for 
a long time in whispers. Dasha listened from time 
to time; Ivan Ilyitch was not able to settle down in 
the study. “He is still up,” Dasha said, “and he must 
go to the works at seven.” She put her feet out of 
bed and felt about for her slippers. She did not find 
them, however, and went in barefoot to her husband. 

Ivan Ilyitch, in his trousers and braces, was sitting 
on the bed made for him on the couch, reading a big 
book, which he held in both hands on his knees. 

[445 ] 



THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


“Aren’t you asleep?” he asked Dasha, looking up 
with shining eyes that saw nothing. “Sit down. I 
have made a discovery. Listen ...” He turned back a 
page and began to read softly: 

“ ‘Three hundred years ago the wind marched un¬ 
hindered through the woods and the plains of the 
steppes, cross the big graveyard known as the Rus¬ 
sian land. There were burnt walls of towns, ashes in 
place of population, crosses and bones on the grass- 
grown roads, flocks of crows and the howl of the wolf 
at night. Here and there, along the forest tracks., 
robber bands wandered. They had long squandered 
on drink the boyar coats, stolen ten years back, and 
the costly vessels and pearl ornaments of the ikons. 
Everything in Russia had been pillaged and cleared. 
Robbers and Cossacks in tattered garments, were hunt¬ 
ing for their last prey. . . . 

“ ‘Russia was ravaged and depeopled. Even the 
Crimean Tartars no longer descended to the wild 
steppes, for there was nothing more to plunder. For 
the ten years of the Great Insurrection, imposters, 
thieves, Cossacks and Polish raiders went with sword 
and fire from end to end of the Russian land. There 
was a terrible famine. People ate horse manure and 
pickled human flesh. Black plague was rampant. The 
remnants of the population wandered along the Lithu¬ 
anian borders to the White Sea, along the Urals to 
Stroganov, to Siberia. 

“‘In those bad times, to the walls of Moscow, laid 
waste and desolate, cleared with difficulty of thieves 
—to that big ash-heap, a sledge was brought along the 
dirty March road, containing the frightened boy 
Michael Romanov. On the advice of the Patriarch, 

[446 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


he had been elected Tsar of Muscovy by the impover¬ 
ished boyars, tradeless merchant guests and grave 
peasants from the north and the Volga. The new 
Tsar could only weep and pray. And he wept and 
prayed, in terror and misery looking out of the carriage 
window at the tattered, wild crowds of Russians, who 
had come out of the Moscow gates to meet him. The 
Russian people had no great faith in the new Tsar, 
but they had to live. And somehow or other, they be¬ 
gan to live. They borrowed money from Stroganov 
merchants. The townspeople began to build and the 
peasants to till the waste land. They sent out trusted 
people, mounted and on foot, to attack the robbers 
on the highways. They lived poorly and strictly. 
They bowed low to the Crimea, Lithuania and Sweden. 
They defended the faith. They knew it was their one 
power; though thievish at times, they were a strong, 
alert, easy-going people. They hoped to live through 
it and they lived through it. Once more the waste 
places, overgrown with tall grass, became peopled.’ ”... 

Ivan Ilyitch closed the book with a bang. 

“You see what it was like. . . . We won’t perish 
now. . . . Great Russia lost! The grandchildren of • 
those ragged peasants, who with their staffs set out to 
rescue Moscow, defeated Karl XII., drove the Tartars 
beyond Perekop, captured Lithuania and on their rafts 
began to haunt the shores of the Pacific Ocean. . . . 
And the grandchild of the boy who was brought to 
Moscow in a sleigh, built Petersburg. . . . Great Russia 
lost! If only a district is left after us, Russia will 
grow from that.” . . . 

He gave a snort and looked out of the window at 
the grey, morning light. Dasha hid her head on his 
shoulder; he stroked it and kissed her hair. 


[ 447 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


“Go to bed, you little coward.” . . . 

Dasha laughed, bid him good night and went away, 
but turned in the doorway. 

“Ivan, isn’t Katia fond of him!” 

“He’s a splendid fellow.” . . . 

Dasha went out. Ivan Ilyitch turned over the pages 
of the book, put it down and lighted a cigarette. He 
leaned against the leather back of the sofa, thinking. 
The whole of that evening he had been worried by a 
feeling of his own blameworthiness. Now that every 
one in the house was asleep, he saw pitilessly what had 
been tormenting him. “I am happy and in order to 
go on living in this happiness, I shut my eyes and 
ears to what is going on around me. I deceive myself 
and deceive Dasha. I am angry when I am told that 
Russia is perishing and I do nothing to prevent her 
perishing. I must either live dishonestly, or . . .” 

The issue of the “or” was so unexpected and Ivan 
Ilyitch was so little prepared for it that after a time 
he thought it better to postpone issues and resolu¬ 
tions to the morrow. He pulled down the window- 
blind and went to bed. 


The evening was still and hot. The air smelt of 
petrol fumes and tar from the wooden paving blocks. 
Windows were brilliantly lighted. Along the Nevsky, 
amid the petrol fumes and tobacco smoke and the dust 
raised by people’s feet, a disorderly, motley crowd 
moved. Puffing and groaning, government cars 
went by waving flags. Shrill voices of newspaper 
boys were calling out the startling news, which no 
one believed. Hawkers of cigarettes and matches and 

[ 448 ] 



THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


stolen goods pushed among the crowd. In the squares 
of Katerine and Nicholas, on the grass plots, by the 
bushes, soldiers loafed around, nibbling seeds and ex¬ 
changing jokes with well-fed street girls. 

Katia was coming from the Nevsky. Vadim Petro- 
vitch had arranged to meet her at seven o’clock on the 
quay. Katia turned down the Palace Square. The 
big windows on the second floor of the blood-red, 
sombre palace were lighted up. Motor-cars stood at 
the main entrance and soldiers and chauffeurs strolled 
about, exchanging jokes. Puffing, a motor-bicycle 
dashed up, bringing a courier, a pale, angry boy in 
a motor cap, a shirt blown out by the wind and in 
puttees. On a corner balcony of the palace, some 
grey-haired man in a jacket was leaning on his elbows, 
sad and motionless. Skirting the palace, Katia turned. 
Above the arch of the General Staff, just as of old, the 
four bronze horses of a chariot were flying to meet 
the sunset. Katia crossed the embankment and sat 
down near the water on a stone, semi-circular seat. 
The transparent blue outlines of bridges were sus¬ 
pended above the gently flowing river. In the golden 
dust there shone the outstretched sword of the Peter 
Paul Cathedral. A wretched little boat moved over 
the reflections on the water. To the left, beyond the 
roofs and the smoke, the huge disc of the dying sun 
sank in the orange glow. 

Folding her hands on her knees, Katia gazed at the 
dying sun, patiently waiting for Vadim Petrovitch. He 
came up unobserved and leaning on the stone, he 
looked down at Katia from above. She could feel his 
presence and turned with a smile. She stood up. He 
was gazing at her with a strange, astonished look. 

[ 449 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


She went up the stairs to the embankment and took 
his arm. They walked on. 

“Well?” Katia asked softly. 

“Well? ... I was coming along and saw an angel 
from heaven sitting on a seat.” 

Katia gently squeezed his arm. She asked him how 
he had got on with his affairs that day. He told her, 
but there was little comfort in what he said. They 
crossed Trinity Bridge and at the top of Kamennoos- 
trovsky Roshchin stopped and gave a nod in the direc¬ 
tion of a private house, decorated with Dutch tiles, 
which stood at the bottom of a garden enclosed by 
railings. The broad windows and the glass walls of 
'the conservatory were brilliantly illuminated. A few 
motor-bicycles stood at the entrance. 

“There’s that scorpions’ nest,” Roshchin said. “All 
right ...” 

It was the private residence of a famous dancer, 
where, having evicted the owner, the central commit¬ 
tee of one of the parties fighting for power, popularly 
called the Bolsheviks, had quartered themselves. Type¬ 
writers clicked throughout the night and in the morn¬ 
ing, when some rough, ragged individuals gathered 
before the house and some gaping passers-by, the head 
of the party came out on the balcony and began to 
speak to the crowd. He told them it was essential to 
overthrow the Provisional Government immediately, 
to give all power to the soviets, to make peace with 
the Germans, to abolish capital punishment, private 
property, money and enforced labour. All this he 
promised to accomplish through the medium of his 
party. 

“Next week we are going to liquidate this nest,” 
Roshchin said. They walked on leisurely down the 

[ 450 ] 


THE ROAD TO CALVARY 


Kamennoostrovsky. A stooping man passed them. 
He was in a ragged coat, an old hat with low-hang¬ 
ing brim; he carried a pail in one hand and a bundle 
of papers in the other. 

“I don’t know if I have a right to. . . . But it doesn’t 
matter, however,” said Roshchin, “the main thing is 

. . you.” Katia looked up at him with raised eye¬ 
brows. “I can’t leave you, Ekaterina Dmitrievna.” 
She immediately dropped her eyes. “We can’t part 
at a time like this.” 

“I dared not say that to you,” Katia replied softly. 
“How can we part, my friend?” 

They came to the place where the man with the 
pail had just posted a small white poster on the wall 
and as they were both excited, they stopped for a 
moment. They read by the light of the street-lamp, 
“To all! To all! To all! Long live the Third Inter¬ 
national ! Comrades, the Revolution is in danger!” . . . 

“Ekaterina Dmitrievna,” said Roshchin, taking her 
thin hand in his own as they walked slowly along the 
broad, now deserted street, at the end of which the 
evening glow had not yet died down, “the years will 
pass, the war will stop, the revolution will cease to rage 
and your gentle, loving heart alone will remain un¬ 
corrupt.” . . . 

The light streamed from the open windows of the 
big houses; sounds of music were borne, gay, careless 
voices and laughter and talk. . . . The stooping man 
with the pail crossed the street and again appeared 
before Katia and Roshchin. He put up a poster on the 
stone wall and turned. In the shadow of his hat, drawn 
over his eyes, Katia could see a gaping hollow of a 
nose and a black tufted beard. 

THE END 


[ 451 ] 


















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